Week 5-Explore the Impact of Administrative Accountability and Week 6 – Assess the Oversight Functions of Administrative Rulemaking

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Week 5

PUB-7002 V3: Administrative (6929289940)

The Importance of Transparency and Due Process in Government

An open, transparent, and accessible government is the fundamental prerequisite for a

democratically-elected government (of the people and for the people) to function

successfully. Had the Founding Fathers not purposefully enshrined ‘ironclad’ transparency

requirements throughout the U.S. Constitution when it was originally published in 1776, it

is highly unlikely the fledgling federal government system they devised would have

succeeded long-term. Founding Fathers and the future 4th President of the United States

(1809-1817), James Madison, served as the lead author of both the Bill of Rights and the

formal separation of powers. Madison emphatically insisted detailed journals of all

governmental proceedings must be kept and made available to the citizenry-at-large, save

only a select number of sensitive (or classified) materials, whose secrecy was justified only

for very specific national security reasons (Rosenbloom, 2015).

Fast forward 170 years to 1946, when U.S. President Harry Truman signed the

Administrative Procedure Act (APA) into law. This legislation established five main

approaches to regulating openness, which has become widely-used ever since 1) public

reporting via the Federal Register, 2) the Freedom of Information Act, 3) a statutory

safeguard against invasions of individual privacy, 4) an open governmental meetings

requirement, and 5) mandatory whistle-blowing protections for public employees against

retaliation or exposing wrong-doing within their respective federal agency. In addition to

publishing information within the Federal Register, some special annual reports are

mandated by the U.S. Congress and published through the Government Accountability

Office. These reports detail performance results, personnel practices, organizational

design, and budgetary data of individual federal agencies and programs. Statutory

transparency requirements at all levels of governmental processes harken all the way back

to America’s very founding. While these transparency requirements can (and do) create a

certain degree of tension between competing priorities of openness, privacy, security, and

efficiency, it is a necessary ‘cost of doing business’ within America’s constitutional

democracy form of government.

80 % 4 of 5 topics complete

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Books and Resources for this Week

Rosenbloom, D. H. (2015).

Administrative law for public managers.

Boulder, Colorado : Westview Press,

2015.
Link

Cucciniello, M., Porumbescu, G. A., &

Grimmelikhuijsen, S. (2017). 25 Years of

transparency research: Evidence and

future directions…
Link

Grimmelikhuijsen, S. G., & Feeney, M.

K. (2017). Developing and Testing an

Integrative Framework for Open

Government Adoption in Local

Governments…
Link

Lamdan, S. S. (2012). Protecting the

Freedom of Information Act requestor:

Privacy for information seekers. The

Kansas Journal of & Public Policy,
Link

Week 5 – Assignment: Explore the Impact of

Administrative Accountability
Assignment

Due July 18 at 11:59 PM

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Operating within a democratically-elected government, federal agencies have regulatory

functional responsibilities that vary widely in terms of both function and scope, but all are

intended to protect and/or advance the common good. A critical component of these

administrative regulatory functions to be accepted as legitimate by the public-at-large is a

transparent and accessible government. This week’s assignment focuses on this critical

component of transparency, a fundamental prerequisite for a representative government.

Prepare a research paper in which you include the following:

Define and explore the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Examine the Privacy Act and provide specific examples.

Confirm whether the FOIA and Privacy Acts are necessary to maintain government

transparency and accountability to the public. Be sure to thoroughly explain your

answer and support your thoughts with a specific justification and/or examples.

Support your assignment with at least five scholarly resources. In addition to these

specified resources, other appropriate scholarly resources, including seminal articles, may

be included.

Length: 5-7 pages, not including title and reference pages

Your assignment should demonstrate thoughtful consideration of the ideas and concepts

presented in the course by providing new thoughts and insights relating directly to this

topic. Your response should reflect scholarly writing and current APA standards. Be sure

to adhere to Northcentral University’s Academic Integrity Policy.

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