Transparency is one of the current buzzwords, which is notnecessarily bad. A keystone of democracy is accountabilityand transparency, i.e., providing information is one way forthe government to be accountable. Since no one wants tolook bad, transparency can be a major impetus for programimprovement.

The most effective way to access an agency’s accountability is with information about the performance of its programs: whether and how the agency is managing its resources to avoid waste, fraud, and abuse; the important amounts in its financial statements, their significance to the agency’s programs, whether and why these amounts have changed from the prior year; and conditions, trends, events, both existing today or likely in the future.