How much do state of Alabama employees earn?

The state website devoted to transparency, Open.alabama.gov, is now including the checks issued to state employees. Soon, checks issued to state officials will be included. Select the State Spending icon in order to search by name (payee), category or agency.

Transparency Tuesday

The last site for our Transparency Tuesday series is OpenSecrets.org. Their mission is to:

• Inform citizens about how money in politics affects their lives
• Empower voters and activists by providing unbiased information
• Advocate for a transparent and responsive government

Transparency Tuesday & a NTIS School Flu Toolkit

Our transparent government site for this Tuesday is GovTrack.us. From the homepage "We help you keep tabs on the U.S. Congress. This is the independent, nonpartisan website that started the "civic hacking" movement in the United States." GovTrack.us pulls information from Thomas & other sources for you to track via feeds or email. This site also makes it easy to research the members of Congress. I think this feature will help us fill in a gap made by budget cuts.

Don't be complacent about the flu. Wash your hands & cough/sneeze in the crook of your arm or in a tissue. The NTIS has a free School Flu Toolkit for grades K-12.

Transparent Tuesdays

Continuing with our transparency in government series, our next site is the Sunlight Foundation. They offer an up-to-date blog that discusses current issues, applications that enable you to keep up with with congress, along with a variety of other projects. You can also join the transparency movement by signing up for their mailing list. Use Twitter? Consider following Sunlight on Twitter.

From their About Us page:

"The Sunlight Foundation was co-founded in 2006 by Washington, DC businessman and lawyer Michael Klein and longtime Washington public interest advocate Ellen Miller with the non-partisan mission of using the revolutionary power of the Internet to make information about Congress and the federal government more meaningfully accessible to citizens. Through our projects and grant-making, Sunlight serves as a catalyst for greater political transparency and to foster more openness and accountability in government. Sunlight’s ultimate goal is to strengthen the relationship between citizens and their elected officials and to foster public trust in government."

Open Government

On January 21, 2009, President Obama signed the Presidential Memorandum on the Freedom of Information Act, reversed changes made by President Bush with an executive order for the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and issued a Presidential Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government.