Heather Brooke Quotes

Ever since I arrived in Washington in April 2009, I have been fighting for more transparency and accountability in government.

The more government transparency, the better.

You’re doing the people’s business and they have a right to know.

I want my government to be transparent.

Open government is, within limits, an ideal that we all share. U.S. President Barack Obama endorsed it when he took office in January 2009.

I promised to run the most open and transparent administration in Britain. That is why, with this brutally honest and unprecedented progress report, I am determined to level with Londoners.

Transparency is not about restoring trust in institutions. Transparency is the politics of managing mistrust.

We need to keep pressure on our own governments to force more and more transparency.

Remarkably, governments are beginning to embrace the idea that nothing enhances democracy more than giving voice and information to everybody in the country. Why not open their books if they have nothing to hide?

The government being the people’s business, it necessarily follows that its operations should be at all times open to public view.

The only way we are held accountable is if people know what government is doing.

The Transparency Bill is something we should all support - practical steps in promoting an open and accountable democracy.

I will run an open government that speaks with honesty, seeks opinion, listens to its citizens.

And one of the things I've tried to do in my first months in office is to give more Georgians - reporters and members of the general public alike - a closer look at how their government works.

In my first year as governor, we solved some of the problems that had begun to undermine the Open Records Act. We gave the act teeth by providing criminal penalties for knowing violations.

Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.

After all, I have spent the better part of my adult life insisting that government be open... that government be accessible... and that government be held accountable to people who voted us into office.

There is no country on earth with a stronger tradition of protecting the public's right to know.

Obama has already rejected the bright sunlight of public knowledge, which is democracy's great disinfectant and cure.

Can the public business be thus transacted and in secret?

Our government cannot function cloaked in secrecy. It cannot function unless officials tell the truth.

… a guarantee of public access to government information is indispensable in the long run for any democratic society.... if officials make public only what they want citizens to know, then publicity becomes a sham and accountability meaningless.

Transparency is the hallmark of Prime Minister Modi's government.

We are world leaders in open and transparent government.

The American people deserve their government to be open and accountable.