US State Department: Hypocritical Transparency-Speak

By Tyler Ament | February 16, 2011

Today, amidst talk of government transparency and accountability, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton threw the press out of strategic discussion with “civil society.” After a 30 minute introduction to a round-table discussion generically titled the “Strategic Dialogue With Civil Society,” Secretary Clinton said, “the press is going to leave so that we can begin our discussion.”

Deafening silence on allegedly transparent webcasts isn’t the only hypocrisy coming out of the State Department’s transparency initiatives. A look at their Foreign Assistance Dashboard shows that this transparency hypocrisy isn’t unusual. The Dashboard touts itself (see the quote below) as an easy-to-use tool, but when it comes to nitty-gritty details, the transparency stops.

For example, when looking through the “reproductive health and family planning” portion of the “Health” sector, there is no information about who actually touches the money. It only displays that the FY 2011 request for USAID’s Global Health Initiative is $125.5 million, and that $50 million was requested for “international organizations.” What organizations you ask? Definitely not $95 million to abortion provider Marie Stopes Intl. Well…actually. Even more interesting is their official description of what sort of work these “international organizations” do.

Why not just come out and say who gets the money, even at least somewhere on the USAID website? Maybe because transparency about abortion advocacy as U.S. Foreign Policy is a bit too transparent.

I recommend reading the quote below while listening to U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.”

The goal of the Foreign Assistance Dashboard is to make all U.S. Government foreign assistance investments available in an accessible and easy-to-understand format. The Dashboard is still in the early stages of development. Future versions will incorporate budget, financial, and program data from all USG agencies receiving or implementing foreign assistance.

Talk is cheap when it comes to what “From the American People” really means, let’s see names and numbers.

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