The website aims to provide citizens and elected officials with model legislation and tools to launch reforms and expand the amount of information available about government.

As Michael Barnhart of Sunshine Review explains, “State and local governments, and school districts, have an affirmative obligation to proactively share the information people need to hold officials accountable for how tax money is spent and how the people’s business is conducted. We must set the bar for state and local government transparency.”

Barnhart suggests state and local governments all need to meet a “sunshine standard” so there is a consistent pattern across the board for government to be defined as “transparent.” The standard includes:

1. Budgets for current and previous years, with a graph showing increases or decreases over time to help citizens evaluate and understand trends in local government spending, including spending for salaries. The checkbook register and credit card receipts should also be posted.
2. Open-meeting laws should be posted, along with notices about public meetings of the governing board, minutes of past meetings, and a schedule and agendas for future and past meetings.
3. Public officials should be listed online by name with contact information, e-mail addresses and the elected official’s voting record. The names of key administrators and their contact information, including e-mail addresses, also should be posted.
4. Building permits and zoning applications should be available for review and downloading. In addition, citizens should be able to submit and track applications online.
5. Audit information should be available for online inspection, including report results, audit schedules and performance audits of government programs.
6. Contract rules should be posted, along with bids and contracts for purchases over $10,000, as well as vendors’ campaign contributions to government contract decision makers.
7. Lobbying contributions to any publicly funded lobbying associations that contribute taxpayer money to other associations should be disclosed.
8. Public records should include the name of the person who is in charge of fulfilling open-records requests, along with contact information for that person.
9. Tax information should be comprehensibly posted in a central location, including and accounting for all state “fees” such as driver’s licenses, all tax documents for all elected officials and identified sources of revenue for each department and agency.

For more on this, read Barnhart’s take and be sure to visit http://sunshinestandard.org.

Now, Texans can “search for information that matters to them, perform online transactions with 24/7 assistance, use an intuitive and effective search function, and access discussion forums designed to increase engagement between citizens and state government,” according to the Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch.

The website (http://www.texas.gov) delivers over 1,000 services and offers a single, comprehensive online resource, making government “available to Texans anytime, anywhere.” In addition, the website comes at no additional cost to taxpayers! It’s entirely self-funded, and has “processed over 118 million financial transactions and collected over $13 billion on behalf of participating entities.”

For more, check out this link. Illinois would do well to take a look at what Texas is doing and learn from a state improving services to its citizens by advancing open government and pushing to improve the ways in which it delivers services at no cost to taxpayers.

Check out its check register here and see where your tax dollars are going.

ABC 7′s I-Team found some interesting expenses of note, such as $6,243.75 to CROE TV (which stands for Coalition for the remembrance of the honorable Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam for more than 40 years) for “Consulting Services” in January 2010; $2,000 for new portraits of most commissioners; and, tens of thousands went to landscaping around county buildings and the jail.

What will you find?

Read ABC’s report and check out their revealing video as well.

This is a great step in the right direction for Cook County.

Now, with this transparency provided, the people, media and elected officials need to use the information and start figuring out where spending is necessary and working well, and where it is unnecessary and should be cut.

Transparency is just the first step in making government more efficient and cost-effective, now the hard work of looking into the spending and doing something about waste is required.

You can find this information by going to IllinoisOpenGov.org, clicking on “Checks to Businesses & People” and searching for “Global Insight (USA) Inc” in the “vendor” section.

You can find this information by going to IllinoisOpenGov.org, clicking on “Checks to Businesses & People” and searching for “CMS/BCCS CPU charges EI&A Prog,” “EI&A Subscriptions,” and “EI&A Travel” in the “category of spending” section.

If you’re interested in seeing salary information for all state employees — benefits data included — check out the Illinois Policy Institute’s spending transparency site, IllinoisOpenGov.org.

You can find this information by going to IllinoisOpenGov.org, clicking on the “Checks to Businesses and Individuals” section and searching for “Siemens Energy & Automation” in the “vendor” section.

You can find this information by going to IllinoisOpenGov.org, clicking on the “Checks to Businesses & People” section and searching for “Carlinville Christmas Market” in the “vendor” section.

The majority of this spending ($2,812,752.08) was for “Attorney Fees-Highway & Related Construction.”  The remaining payments were for general attorney and legal fees.

The Office of the Comptroller also provides a list of all the contracts Illinois has paid or holds with law firms.

You can find this information by going to IllinoisOpenGov.org, clicking on the “Checks to Businesses & People” section and searching for “Attorney Fees-Highway & Related Construction,” “Attorney Fees- Grants and Awards,” “Combined Settlement/Attorney Payments,” and “Legal Fees” in the “category of spending” section.