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The … Expand. On a global scale transparency is seen increasingly as an important tool of governance. Within environmental policy at the nation state level, transparency is also seen as a way to achieve positive … Expand. In response, Congress in amended the federal Safe Drinking Water Act to require that water suppliers, starting in October , provide customers with annual reports on contamination. The annual reports included information on the source of tap water, contaminants found in the water, sources of contamination, and violations of EPA maximum contaminant levels.
Their purpose was to allow consumers to make better choices concerning their use of tap water and to encourage water utilities to be more vigilant in minimizing contaminants.
The Milwaukee incident was not the only driver of greater transparency. Americans were losing confidence in their public water supplies. Surveys in the late s found that only three-quarters of Americans regularly drank tap water, and 65 percent increasingly used bottled water or filtered water at the tap. Contamination levels varied widely with seasons, rainfall, and waste discharges. Sometimes chemicals and microbes entered systems as water flowed to homes through century-old pipes.
Transparency requirements proved too weak to help residents assess risks or compare the safety of different water systems, however. In , an analysis of drinking water reports in nineteen cities by the National Resources Defense Council found that some cities buried or omitted information about health effects of contamination or warnings to consumers with compromised immune systems, all omitted information about specific polluters, fewer than half offered reports in languages other than English, and many made sweeping and inaccurate claims about water safety despite violations of federal contaminant levels.
As of , the drinking water contaminant disclosure system appeared to be unsustainable. Reports had improved little over the years in scope, quality, or use. Interestingly, new emphasis on homeland security raised the possibility of requiring more timely monitoring and perhaps disclosure.
The anecdotal evidence in Los Angeles, however, was indicative of a more widespread problem. Food-borne diseases cause an estimated , hospitalizations and 5, deaths each year in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control CDC estimates that nearly 50 percent of food-borne disease outbreaks are connected to restaurants or other commercial food outlets. The public outcry arising from the investigative series led the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to legislate transparency to inform the public about hygiene conditions in all restaurants in the region.
They unanimously adopted a disclosure requirement on December 16, one month after the series was aired , which went into effect on January 16, By making these grades public, the Board of Supervisors sought to reduce the effects of food-borne diseases by putting competitive pressure on public eating establishments with poor hygiene practices.
Although the transparency requirement was adopted at the county level, individual cities within the county were not required to adopt the ordinance all but ten had chosen to do so by the end of The system builds directly on the health inspections conducted regularly by the DHS.
Health inspections cover a range of very specific practices, including food temperatures, kitchen and serving area handling and preparation practices, equipment cleaning and employee sanitary practices, and surveillance of vermin. Cumulative points are then deducted from a starting score of A score from 90 to points receives an A, 80 to 89 a B, and 70 to 79 a C.
The transparency system requires restaurants to post the letter grade arising from the most recent inspection on the front window. Restaurants receive two or three unannounced inspections and one reinspection, upon request, per year. Thus, although the posting of grade cards entails relatively small costs, the system relies on a large number of inspections about seventy-five thousand in and therefore means a sizable enforcement budget for the DHS.
The introduction of the new transparency system led to fairly rapid and significant changes in the overall grade distribution in county restaurants as noted, the grading system existed before the disclosure requirement. When the program began, 58 percent of restaurants received an A grade, a number that grew to 83 percent by The incentives to improve are significant.
Jin and Leslie report that after grade posting became required, restaurants receiving an A grade experienced revenue increases of 5. More important, studies found significant decreases in food-borne-illness hospitalizations, ranging from 13 percent Simon et al. The system is not without its problems. There is some evidence that inspectors have become more lenient over time. Several other cities in the United States have similar restaurant hygiene disclosure systems. Disclosing Rollover Propensities to Improve Auto Safety In , a series of widely reported traffic fatalities associated with rollovers of popular sport utility vehicles SUVs drew national attention.
These incidents, which also involved sudden tread separation in certain lines of Firestone tires, highlighted a more general public safety problem. SUVs were more likely than sedans or station wagons to roll over, and some SUVs were much more likely to roll over than others.
Improving public understanding of rollover risks was also important because federal rules did not set any minimum safety standards for new-model rollover performance, as they did for front and side impact crashworthiness. The auto industry had successfully opposed such a standard for two decades.
Regulators required rollover ratings to be presented in a simple five-star format that paralleled the existing star rating systems for front and side impact crashworthiness. The new law and regulations added other disclosure requirements. Disclosure improved over time. In , Congress further increased consumer access to rollover information by requiring that rollover ratings be posted on new-car stickers in auto showrooms. Early evidence suggested that auto rollover disclosure helped to inform consumers and encourage safer new-model design.
Five years after the requirement was introduced, only one model the Ford Explorer Sport Trac received as few as two stars, while twenty-four models earned four-star ratings. Interestingly, this targeted transparency system also helped to change the politics of auto safety regulation. By encouraging manufacturers to accelerate introduction of new stabilizing technology, the rollover rating system reduced industry opposition to a minimum safety standard for rollovers.
In , Congress directed regulators to issue such a standard. However, as of , the rollover rating system still had significant weaknesses. The system relied on government rather than manufacturer tests. As a result of budget and logistical constraints, not all new-model cars were tested, and some test results were not available until late in the model year. Ratings also did not allow consumers to compare the safety of specific models across weight classes.
Rollover star ratings themselves remained controversial, as did the longer-established star ratings for crashworthiness in front and side impacts. The Transportation Research Board, as well as consumer groups and auto insurance associations, charged that star ratings gave consumers a falsely positive impression of safety, since one-star vehicles could have a 40 percent chance of rolling over, and that ratings diminished in usefulness when most vehicles earned four or five stars.
Disclosing Terrorism Threats to Improve Public Safety Six months after the attacks of September 11, , the Bush administration created a color-coded ranking system to inform the public about terrorist threats. The system was designed to be flexible and information-based. It provided a framework for communicating the severity of national, local, or sector-specific threats as well as their likely character and timing.
The alert system established five color-coded levels of terrorist threat: green — low; blue — guarded; yellow — elevated; orange — high; red — severe. The presidential directive clearly contemplated that alerts would be accompanied by factual information. The directive also made it clear that information was intended to create incentives for action.
Each level of alert was meant to trigger threat-specific protective measures by government agencies, private organizations, and individuals. The directive provided that threat levels would reflect both the probability and the gravity of attack and would be reviewed at regular intervals to see if they should be adjusted.
The level set was to be based on the degree to which a threat was credible, corroborated, imminent, and grave. The system provided flexibility. Threat levels could be set for specific geographical areas or for specific industries or facilities. The system provided for case-by-case judgments about whether threat levels would be announced publicly or communicated in a more limited way to emergency officials and other selected audiences.
Once the Department of Homeland Security DHS was created in March , the secretary of homeland security was charged with responsibility for setting threat levels, with the advice of the Homeland Security Council. Within the department, the warning system was administered by an undersecretary for information analysis and infrastructure protection.
As of early , the terrorist threat warning level had been raised and lowered seven times, each time from yellow elevated to orange high and back again. The system gen- erally produced warnings that proved too vague to provide government officials, business managers, or ordinary citizens with incentives to take appropriate protective actions. However, alerts were increasingly specific. The system worked differently for different audiences.
When a decision was made to change the threat level, department officials notified federal, state, and local agencies electronically or by phone and also called chief executives of major corporations, using a secure connection maintained by the Business Roundtable. DHS also developed channels for communicating threat information without raising the overall threat level.
The department issued threat advisories or less urgent information bulletins for specific locales or sectors. Access to these communications was often restricted, however, leaving the public uninformed. Officials explained that such information was shared on a need-to-know basis, since it was often derived from classified sources. In practice, however, the terrorist threat warning system remained problematic. Several in-depth evaluations and surveys found that rankings were little used by its intended audiences.
Public and private groups expressed frustration at the lack of information about the character and location of threats. The commission recommended the creation of a regional alert system featuring specific guidance, as well as training local officials for responses to each threat level.
Government officials have rarely received information specific enough to act upon. A survey by the General Accounting Office in found that sixteen of twenty-four federal agencies had received information about elevated threat levels from the media before they received it from homeland security officials.
Each federal department was required to come up with its own protective measures appropriate to each threat level and to take those actions each time the threat level was raised.
However, federal agencies sur veyed by the GAO reported that changes from yellow to orange had minimal impact on their practices, since they maintained high levels of security at all times. State officials, too, reported that they received much of their information about changed threat levels through the media and got little specific information from the government.
The GAO survey found that fifteen of forty states learned about threat level changes from the media before they heard from federal officials in at least one instance.
State and local officials reported that learning about threats at the same time as the public could carry heavy political costs. State officials also noted that they received conflicting advice from different federal authorities about what actions to take.
Local officials, always on the front lines in preparing for and responding to disasters, n eed accurate, specific, and timely information. A report by the minority staff of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee concluded in that two years after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, state and local officials had too little information to respond to ter rorist attacks. The report noted that effective communication channels still had not been established with state and local officials, so states and localities had no effective way of communicating with one another or of learning from the successes or mistakes of others.
A June report by the nonpartisan GAO echoed these themes. It suggested that warnings would be more effective if they were more specific and action-or iented; communicated through multiple methods; included timely notification; and featured specific information on the nature, location, and timing of threats as well as guidance on actions to take in response to threats. The public remained confused. Information accompanying increases in the threat level often has been vague or irrelevant to the daily activities of most Americans.
Most state governments and many local governments have developed their own alert systems which are not necessarily consistent with the federal system. The administration has also sent mixed messages to the public concerning what actions to take. In June , Ridge acknowledged that the system needed improvement.
Members of Congress from both parties expressed growing impatience with vague and conflicting messages. After the government raised the threat level to orange over the Christmas holidays and told citizens to be vigilant but continue their daily routines, Christopher Shays R-Conn.
Senator Frank R. Lautenberg D-N. Public confusion was reflected in polls. A Hart-Teeter poll sponsored by the Council for Excellence in Government in March found that 73 percent of those polled were anxious or concerned about terrorism and 34 percent had looked for information about what to do in the event of an attack, but only one person in five was aware of state or local preparedness plans.
Earlier Fox News polls found that 78 percent of those responding did not know or said they were not sure what the current threat level was and that 90 percent responded to recent elevation of the threat level by going about their lives as usual.
A New York Times poll in October found that nearly two-thirds of those responding did not have emergency kits prepared and more than two-thirds did not have communication plans. Union leaders like John L. The considerable economic and political influence exercised by labor unions provoked concern in the business community and in Congress. In , congressional hearings chaired by Senator John L. McClellan D-Ark. The two-year, high-profile, and often sensational Senate investigations revealed corruption in a number of major labor organizations and resulted in calls for government intervention in union governance.
Political compromise produced the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act LMRDA , which created standards for democratic governance and required unions to periodically reveal detailed information regarding financial practices and governance procedures.
From the start, disclosure imposed substantial costs on union officers but offered few benefits to them, creating incentives for officers to provide minimal information. Regional offices carried only records relating to union affiliates in their geographical area. These high costs to individual information users created a potential role for intermediaries. But, as of , it remained uncommon to find formal groups within unions that could act independently of incumbent officers and were capable of playing an intermediary role.
Employers, too, rarely used the information from the disclosure system to discredit unions — they had more effective tools at hand. With high costs to information disclosers and users, and few intermediaries available to lower user costs, it is not surprising that the scope, accuracy, and use of this disclosure system did not improve much in forty years. The only significant expansion in scope occurred with the passage of legislation that created similar access to union financial information for federal government workers and the addition of reporting requirements for financial institutions that made loans to unions.
Accuracy or timeliness of the disclosed information improved little. The financial categories and definitions remained the same, as did the level of required financial detail. The likelihood of a recordkeeping inspection was small, and most penalties were directed toward unions that intentionally failed to file or that falsified reports.
Overall use of information by rank-and-file union members remained minimal. The costs of disclosing and particularly of using information, however, fell substantially when Congress appropriated funds in fiscal years and to develop and implement electronic filing and dissemination of reports. Over the following three years, the Labor Department developed systems for both filing and accessing disclosure forms via the Internet. The most significant changes to union financial reporting requirements since came with the election of George W.
Bush in More important, the Bush administration used its authority to issue regulations to alter a variety of reporting requirements. They ultimately lost these legal challenges in From the beginning, the primary purpose of campaign finance disclosure was to reduce corruption in government. In Buckley v. Valeo , the Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of federal disclosure requirements, the Court concluded that disclosure reduced corruption in three ways.
The use of transparency to reduce campaign finance corruption began early and improved in response to episodes of perceived abuses. The first campaign finance disclosure law, the Publicity Act of , was championed by President Theodore Roosevelt and progressive reformers as an antidote to the influence of big business in politics.
Roosevelt pressed for disclosure after his opponent in the election accused him of accepting corporate gifts intended to buy influence in the administration. Civic organizations such as the National Publicity Law Organization kept pressure on Congress until the law was passed. FECA required candidates for national office to disclose contributions of one hundred dollars or more in quarterly reports.
However, our research suggests that such uses of targeted transparency more often fail than succeed. Our analysis of 18 major policies—both national and international -- explains why. Our framework sets forth the sequence of steps that leads to effective transparency and shows the importance of making information available when, where and how users need it.
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