Among advocates for open government, it is often said that public officials should not get kudos for doing the minimum. If the law requires a certain degree of openness and the authorities oblige, they might avoid a kick in the shin but won’t likely get a pat on the back.
That may be the operative theory behind the “D” rating awarded the Wisconsin Legislature in a new 50-state ranking of legislative websites produced by the Sunlight Foundation, a national nonprofit group that promotes government transparency.
The searches and rankings of state legislative websites were done by the group’s staff and volunteers, as part of Sunshine Week, a national observance of open government. Possible scores ranged from “-2” to “+2,” with “0” representing the middle ground.
Wisconsin scored a “0” in all six survey categories: Completeness, timeliness, ease of access, machine readability, standards and permanence. Usually, this translated as meeting a minimal standard as defined by the group.
For instance, the Wisconsin Legislature’s “0” in completeness meant that its website provides a “full breadth” of access to basic information on bills, legislators, votes and committees. If it hadn’t included roll-call information on individual votes it would have gotten a “-1.”
On ease of access, Wisconsin’s website was deemed average, which meant that it was deemed neither “exceptionally well laid-out” nor “extremely difficult to use.”
And on permanence, the website’s “0” ranking meant that “legislator and committee information lacks a permanent location” but most of this can still be found.
The Wisconsin Legislature’s website archives data on bills, acts and legislative proposals going back to at least 1989-90. This can be found at https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/archive.
In all, the Sunlight Foundation awarded eight As, 11 Bs, 20 Cs, six Ds, and six Fs. The states getting As were: Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia, Kansas, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Texas and Washington. The F scores: Alabama, Colorado, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska and Rhode Island.
The full list can be found at http://openstates.org/reportcard/. The group’s write-up on its results is at http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/03/11/openstates-report-card/.
The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Credit should be given, in this format: “By Dee J. Hall, Wisconsin Watch”
- If published online, you must include the links and link to wisconsinwatch.org
- If you share the story on social media, please mention @wisconsinwatch (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram)
- Don’t sell the story — it may not be marketed as an individual product.
- Don’t sell ads against the story. But you can publish it with pre-sold ads.
- Your website must include a prominent way to contact you.
- Additional elements that are packaged with our story must be labeled.
- Users can republish our photos, illustrations, graphics and multimedia elements ONLY with stories with which they originally appeared. You may not separate multimedia elements for standalone use.
- If we send you a request to change or remove Wisconsin Watch content from your site, you must agree to do so immediately.
For questions regarding republishing rules please contact Andy Hall, executive director, at ahall@wisconsinwatch.org