Coral Gables Transparency: Lessons from Washington

The openness community is criticizing the Obama Administration for not using outside participation and involvement in the formulation of its promised openness policy.

“It seems pretty absurd that they’re supposed to be working on recommendations for transparency, participation and collaboration, yet they’re not using any of those three things as tools,” said Gary Bass of OMB Watch, a nonprofit group that advocates more open government. “There’s something wrong about talking about public access — without the public.” (Politico.com)

The City of Coral Gables can learn from this experience by promoting greater openness, citizen participation and involvement to get more input on the bigger issues. It is not enough to have open Commission meeting. Rather community forums on big issues should be organized to increase community participation and interest.