Sunday, March 4, 2012

Transparent Government

We have lost the trust of a large number of our citizens. They do not believe that any party or politician is honest or altruistic. I believe that this is partially due to dishonesty but it is also due to a closed door policy that is much harder to address.

In a world of instant access to information there is very little time to check the facts before a story hits the media. So to protect themselves from responding to every rumour, I believe the norm has become to cover up everything until the last possible moment. Then, hopefully, the facts will be a little clearer.

This is understandable on one hand, but counterproductive in the long run. For example, wouldn't it be much better to make a statement like,

We don't know the facts about the RoboCalls but we are 100% committed to
finding out and taking the strongest possible action against anyone involved
whether they are associated with our party or not.

Then, keep all the rhetoric down to a minimum while publishing the facts as they are known.  In the end, do what we said we would do and eventually the public will have enough trust to allow time for the facts to be clarified.

It is a slow process to change a culture and this cannot happen overnight. People still want to get all the news and make their decisions based on their friend's Face Book posts. However, if we are committed to transparent government and we take obvious steps toward making it happen, I believe that people will start to allow time for reflection before arriving at the conclusion that every story is just more proof of corruption.