Editorial: Keep improving city’s transparency

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Updated: November 2, 2011 6:48PM

The voters ultimately are responsible for ensuring government is efficient and honest, but they can’t do their job without easy access to public information.

On Wednesday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel helped the city take a major step forward by posting information online about more than 90,000 city contracts dating back to 1993. In the past, much of the information was available, but it was hard to find and difficult to search through.

This is just the latest in a series of online postings by Emanuel’s administration, including names and salaries of city employees, information on lobbyists, crime and abandoned buildings.

The new contract information, to be updated daily, allows viewers to look at contract summaries all at once, making it easier to compare them and add up how much money is going to each city vendor.

But the picture of city activities isn’t complete: The numbers detail only contract awards, not the amount actually spent. They don’t show how some outlays may go up because of cost overruns or other reasons, and others may go down because of unanticipated savings.

The data are unstructured, kind of like your junk drawer at home that’s difficult to search through. If Emanuel is serious about transparency, his team needs to keep working to make the city’s Web presence more user-friendly.

“It is great that the information is out there; what is needed out there is for someone to come up with a method to sift through it,” said David Morrison, associate director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform.

Andy Shaw, president and CEO of the Better Government Association, thinks it would be helpful if the city also had an online checkbook, so voters could track how the inflow and outgo of money matches the municipal budget. Moreover, he would like to see an after-the-fact posting of people the mayor meets with during the course of a week.

In the meantime, though, kudos to the city for spreading a little sunshine on City Hall.