Radical transparency is a terminology used across fields of governance, politics, software design and business to describe actions and approaches that radically increase the

openness Openness is an overarching concept that is characterized by an emphasis on transparency and collaboration. That is, openness refers to "accessibility of knowledge, technology and other resources; the transparency of action; the permeability of or ...

of organizational process and data. Its usage was originally understood as an approach or act that uses abundant networked information to access previously confidential organizational process or outcome data, since partly popularized by Ray Dalio at

Bridgewater Associates Bridgewater Associates, LP (informally known as "Bridgewater") is an American investment management firm founded by Ray Dalio in 1975. The firm serves institutional clients including pension funds, Financial endowment, endowments, Foundation (no ...

and in his 2017 book,

Principles A principle may relate to a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of beliefs or behavior or a chain of reasoning. They provide a guide for behavior or evaluation. A principle can make values explicit, so t ...

History and uses

Modern usage of the term radical transparency coincided with increased public use of Information communications technologies including the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

. Kevin Kelly argued in 1994 that, “in the network era, openness wins, central control is lost.”

David Brin Glen David Brin (born October 6, 1950) is an American science fiction author. He has won the Hugo Award, Hugo,

's writing on '' The Transparent Society'' re-imagined the societal consequences of radical transparency remixing

Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to a ...

's ''

1984 Events January * January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888. * January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeas ...

''. However, the explicit political argument for “radical transparency” was first made in a 2001

Foreign Affairs ''Foreign Affairs'' is an American magazine of international relations and foreign policy of the United States, U.S. foreign policy published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonprofit organization, nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership or ...

article on information and communication technology driving economic growth in developing regions. In 2006

Wired Wired may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976 * ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993 * ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017 * "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street'' * "Wired ...

’s Chris Anderson blogged on the shift from secrecy to transparency blogging culture had made on corporate communications, and highlighted the next step as a shift to ‘radical transparency’ where the “whole product development process slaid bare, and opened to customer input.” By 2008 the term was being used to describe the

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is a non-profit media organisation and publisher of leaked documents. It is funded by donations and media partnerships. It has published classified documents and other media provided by anonymous sources. It was founded in 2006 by ...

platform that radically decentralized the power, voices and visibility of governance knowledge that was previously secret.

Contexts

Radical corporate transparency

Radical corporate transparency, as a philosophical concept, would involve removing all barriers to free and easy public access to corporate, political and personal (treating persons as corporations) information and the development of laws, rules, social

connivance Connivance is the act of conniving or conspiring, especially with the knowledge of and active or passive consent to wrongdoing or a twist in truth, to make something appear as something that it is not. A legal finding of connivance may be made ...

and processes that facilitate and protect such an outcome. Using these methods to 'hold corporations accountable for the benefit of everyone' was emphasised in Tapscott and Ticoll's book "The Naked Corporation" in 2003. Radical transparency has also been explained by Dan Goleman as a

management Management (or managing) is the administration of organizations, whether businesses, nonprofit organizations, or a Government agency, government bodies through business administration, Nonprofit studies, nonprofit management, or the political s ...

approach where (ideally,) all decision making is carried out publicly. Specific to this approach is the potential for new technologies to reveal the eco-impact of products bought to steer consumers to make informed decisions and companies to reform their business practices. In traditional

public relations Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. Pu ...

management, damage control involved the suppression of public information. But, as observed by Clive Thompson in ''

'', the

has created a force towards transparency: " re's the interesting paradox: The reputation economy creates an incentive to be more open, not less. Since Internet commentary is inescapable, the only way to influence it is to be part of it. Being transparent, opening up, posting interesting material frequently and often is the only way to amass positive links to yourself and thus to directly influence your Googleable reputation. Putting out more evasion or PR puffery won't work, because people will either ignore it and not link to it – or worse, pick the spin apart and enshrine ''those'' criticisms high on your Google list of life."

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born May 14, 1984) is an American businessman who co-founded the social media service Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms, of which he is the chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling sharehold ...

has opined that "more transparency should make for a more tolerant society in which people eventually accept that everybody sometimes does bad or embarrassing things."

Radical political transparency

Heemsbergen argues that radical political transparency consists of actors outside of the structures of government, using new media forms, to disclose secrets to the public in ways that were previously unavailable and that create new expectations around how information should be used to govern. A prominent example of these evolutions of democracy was seen in the creation of ''

Hansard ''Hansard'' is the transcripts of parliamentary debates in Britain and many Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth countries. It is named after Thomas Curson Hansard (1776–1833), a London printer and publisher, who was the first official printe ...

'' in parliaments of the

Westminster system The Westminster system, or Westminster model, is a type of parliamentary system, parliamentary government that incorporates a series of Parliamentary procedure, procedures for operating a legislature, first developed in England. Key aspects of ...

, which started in pirate markets of pamphleteers illegally sharing the 'secrets' of what was said in British Parliament. ''

'' is now institutionalised in many parliaments, with full records of discussions in parliament recorded and published, while the texts of proposed laws and final laws are all, in principle, public documents. Since the late 1990s, many national parliaments decided to publish all parliamentary debates and laws on the Internet. However, the initial texts of proposed laws and the discussions and negotiations regarding them generally occur in parliamentary commissions, which are rarely transparent, and among

political parties A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular area's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or p ...

, which are very rarely transparent. Moreover, given the logical and linguistic complexity of typical national laws, public participation is difficult despite the radical transparency at the formal parliamentary level. Radical transparency has also been suggested in the context of government finance and public economics. In Missed Information, Sarokin and Schulkin take the concept even further, advocating for ''hypertransparency'' of government decision-making, a situation where all internal records, emails, meeting minutes and other internal information is proactively available to the public. Hypertransparency reverses the current Freedom of Information model of access only upon request, instead making all information available by default unless withheld for limited exemptions such as personal information or national security.

Radical educational transparency

A radically transparent approach is also emerging within education.

Open educational resources Open educational resources (OER) are Instructional materials, teaching, learning, and research materials intentionally created and Free license, licensed to be free for the end user to own, share, and in most cases, modify. The term "OER" descr ...

(OER) are freely accessible, usually openly licensed documents and media that are useful for teaching, learning, educational, assessment and research purposes. Although some people consider the use of an

open format An open file format is a file format for storing digital data, defined by an openly published specification usually maintained by a standards organization, and which can be used and implemented by anyone. An open file format is licensed with a ...

to be an essential characteristic of OER, this is not a universally acknowledged requirement. In addition online courses activities are also becoming increasingly more accessible for others.Baltzersen, R. K. (2010)
Radical transparency: Open access as a key concept in wiki pedagogy
. ''Australasian Journal of Educational Technology'', 26(6), p.791-809. Retrieved May 13, 2013 One example are the new and popular massive open online courses (MOOC).

History and uses

Contexts

Radical corporate transparency

Radical political transparency

Radical educational transparency

See also

References

Further reading