Transparency in the US and UK

The White House blog summarises last week's open government brainstorming on transparency.
Here is an extract:

1) Transparency Principles: How do we define transparency so that we can prioritize our policymaking?

• Adopt 8 Open Government Data Principles (complete, primary, timely, accessible, machine processable, non-discriminatory, non-proprietary, license-free);
• Adopt Carter Center Plan of Action for the Advancement of the Right of Access to Information;
• Crowdsourcing should be adopted as a principle and best practices around the use of crowdsourcing to evaluate data should be established;
• Agencies should explain all policy decisions and the rationales behind them in readable language;

I may be getting ahead of myself here, but I think we may be at an important tipping point. Until recently, the burden of proof has been on those who wanted government information to be published. We had to show that the benefits of doing to outweighed the costs.  But the mood has changed - in the UK, partly as a result of the political interest in MPs' expenses.  The burden of proof is increasingly on those in government to show why any particular information should not be published.   David Cameron spoke the other day of an army of "armchair auditors" able to examine every item of public expenditure.

The implication for our work at aidinfo is clear.  Obviously it is hugely welcome if governments begin to publish detailed information online.  But that information will be much more useful and powerful if it goes online organised and tagged in a common, machine-readable format used by all donors around the world.