- Government's Biggest Spenders Are the Least Transparent, Report Finds - A Tangled Web We Weaved/ Who Rules The Site? Public Affairs, The CIO - Or Both? Patrice McDermott, Director OpenTheGovernment.org www.openthegovernment.org 202.332.OPEN (6736) - GOVERNMENT'S BIGGEST SPENDERS ARE THE LEAST TRANSPARENT, REPORT FINDS BY Richard W. Walker Published on April 4, 2007 The federal government's biggest-spending agencies tend to disclose less about how their work benefits the public, according to a new study. In its eighth annual report on agency transparency and performance, Which Federal Agencies Best Inform the Public, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University gave less than satisfactory scores to agencies that accounted for 87 percent of federal spending in 2006. Agencies representing 13 percent of federal spending 2006 received satisfactory or better scores, down from 15 percent in last year's study. In the report, Mercatus officials made it clear that their purpose was not to judge the quality of the actual results that agencies produced but rather to ascertain how well the agencies' reports convey those results to the public. more [FCW] *** - A TANGLED WEB WE WEAVED/ WHO RULES THE SITE? PUBLIC AFFAIRS, THE CIO - OR BOTH? 04/02/07 By Trudy Walsh, When Candi Harrison became Web manager for the Housing and Urban Development Department 12 years ago, the Web was an electronic wilderness. Excited about the new medium, people flocked to the Internet as a place where creativity and cunning mattered more than standards or a uniform look and feel. The "grassroots legacy of letting a thousand flowers bloom was great in the beginning of the Web," Harrison said, now happily retired and living in Arizona after 10 years as HUD's Web manager. "But we're smarter now." Like many agencies, HUD found itself in a struggle over who controlled the agency's use of the Web. The Web runs on computers, so would the CIO's office have dominion over it? But then again, the Web is also about communicating with the public, so wouldn't the public affairs office run it? "Every single time there was a change in authority, there was a battle between public affairs and the CIO," Harrison said. Twelve years later, agencies are still fighting the same battle. Whose Web is it anyway? According to two researchers at George Mason University, two models of Web governance are emerging. Julianne Mahler and Priscilla Regan, professors at GMU's Department of Public and International Affairs, say federal Web sites are veering toward one of two approaches: A strategic view, which involves keeping tight control over a Web site and designating one office, usually public affairs, to formulate and evaluate materials submitted by other agency program offices. A looser, self-organizing approach, which is decentralized, team-based and self-directed. Under this model, Web governance shifts away from a hierarchical, rule-governed bureaucratic approach to something that "looks more like a network-self-organized, self-governed," Mahler said. Mahler said that the lack of strategic control of the Web during the past 12 years has been, by and large, a good thing; she asserts that "much of the energy and utility of Web sites has been due to benign neglect." more [GCN] ***
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