Americans don't believe their federal government is very transparent, even if they allow that it's more transparent than many major industrial sectors, according to the results of an online survey released Oct. 20.

Asked to rate the transparency of the federal government, citizens who responded to an online questionnaire during August and September of this year collectively responded with a score of 42 out a 100, finds a study conducted by ForeSee Results of Ann Arbor, Mich.

Citizens gave the White House a score of 46, while agencies and departments got a 40 and Congress a mere 37. Still, those scores are generally higher than the transparency scores of the banking, healthcare and oil and gas industries, which received survey scores of 32, 32 and 30, respectively.

When asked to rate only the transparency of federal websites, however, agencies did better. Survey results show that citizens say the online thoroughness and accessibility of information is better than it was last quarter. Agencies received a collective score of 75.8 on a scale of 100 for website transparency, up nearly a point over the previous quarter. In August, ForeSee reported that visitors to 27 federal websites gave agencies a transparency score of 75. The agency transparency rating for this quarter is creeping closer to the score of 76 (based on satisfaction scores garnered from 24 government websites) the federal government earned during the first quarter of this year. See how each agency fared here.

Visitors to federal websites may recognize this survey from the ForeSee box that asks users to rate their perceptions of the content on a ten-point scale.

Transparency perceptions are important because "higher transparency leads to higher citizen satisfaction with government, which in turn leads to higher trust," explained the report. According to ForeSee, agencies can improve public-perceptions of openness by improving their websites and making more data available on websites.

For more:
- see the press release
- see the report fact sheet
- see the entire report (reg. req.)
- download the ForeSee Q2 2010 e-government transparency index (reg. req.)
- see the ForeSee Q2 2010 ratings for 27 participating agency websites

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