This is not a policy so much as a seed to generate discussion of the topic.
Most local and county governments across the US function in very similar manner. They all deal with delivery of water and sewer service, waste collection and disposal, fire and police protection, road/street develpment and maintenance, etc. Beyond those core functions there is probably more diversity.
I’ve read that a few municipalities and counties place all their financial records, minutes of meetings, and other information such as crime and traffic statistics on web pages. I read of a county that puts their financial statements including even their payments ledger online for public access.
If (given?) that most such entities function in a very similar manner for a large percentage of their functions (say 80-90%), wouldn’t it make sense to develop the equivalent of industry standards for gathering and presenting the information online? Further, wouldn’t it make sense to require those government entities to subscribe to the standards and to present the information online?
What do you think? Is there value in having transparency to the level of being able to scrutinize payment ledgers? Wouldn’t you like to see the equivalent of the Kelly Blue Book for the communities you are moving into?
What arguments are there for not doing this?
I see this as a business opportunity for industrious software developers. The large national accounting firms could be engaged to help develop the model for gathering and presenting core functions data and for ancillary, special case scenarios that individual entities might face. Call it the Fair-Isaacs score for local government.