No Secrets Any More

I meant to blog about this on Friday when it was announced, but the Obama administration's adopted an interesting policy regarding its transition-related meetings with outside groups: they're going to make available documents from those meetings dating back to Nov. 4, and through Inauguration on January 20. There are some obvious exclusions, of course. Nothing about specific personnel decisions goes on line, and neither does anything with national security implications. From what I can tell by perusing the documents they've got up already, they're not exactly posting transcripts of meeting minutes either. They're basically putting up interest groups' submissions and wish lists, which is fine, but not perhaps as informative as they're making it out to be.

And they don't have a ton of documents up yet either, though from what I can tell just from my limited circle of sources, there are a lot of conversations with a lot of groups going on. Some of the links are not working consistently, too. It seems to me that this initiative is well-intentioned, but much like Change.gov as a whole, was pushed forward before a) it could fulfill its full promise and b) all the kinks were worked out. I understand that the new administration wants to appear more open and tech-savvy. But it does seem like some patience might serve them better on endeavors like this.