We Need An Annual National Report
Large public businesses are required to file an annual corporate report every year. Anyone can easily obtain a copy and review many facts about the company.
We need a similar document from our governments, especially the federal government. Please understand: I focus on the federal government most often because it is the largest and most intrusive entity, takes the most money from the people, and, if reformed, would generate the largest savings due to elimination of waste and greater efficiency. I’d like to see the same reporting required of our state and local governments, too.
Yes, I know there is a wealth of information already published by the government. The problem is, there’s too much of it and it’s scattered all over the place. I’m talking about a comprehensive, organized document that would function as a consistent tool that citizens could use to obtain “business” answers about our government. So, for the most part, this project would call for the coordination of information that’s already available more than the generation of new information.
This document should NOT be printed… that would cost too much, would soon be outdated, and would carry many associated costs (distribution, for example). This is the age of the internet, so THAT’s how it would be delivered. Even if a citizen does not have a computer or internet service, it is readily available to anyone with a minimum of effort at public libraries and other such facilities.
The Annual National Report would undoubtedly have some narrative introduction which would have the unavoidable political spin on the facts, but would be mostly comprised of consolidated facts and figures in the standard financial format, with summary figures linked to the source data located on the relevant department’s website. The structure should start out at a high level and allow drilling down to find more and more detail with ease… without requiring the reader to launch on some unstructured search for the supporting data elsewhere.
Since the President is the nation’s chief executive officer, it would be the responsibility of that office to publish the report. Already, there is a start to such a document in the Economic Report of the President, but it’s only a start… that’s more like the Future Outlook and Competitive Comparisons portions of an annual report.
We usually get some hint about the kind of information I’d like to see in the IRS 1040 package that we receive… this year it was deemed so important, it was on page 86.
Source: IRS
Why do I believe an annual, detailed reporting tool is a good idea?
Information is power… and I like to see power in the hands of the citizens. Rather than making it hard to find and presenting it in a way that is difficult to understand, which discourages understanding, it would become something that at the top level could be understood by almost anyone… and, for those who want to find the facts behind any particular category, that greater detail would only be a click away.
I also suggest that this tool should be used in certain school subjects, government and math, for example. Orient our youth to the availability and meaning of the information early… and they would “grow into” a fuller knowledge of how our country operates financially.
Furthermore, the annual report should compare the current figures to the prior year AND to the numbers 10 years ago. Such comparisons would make it easier to see the direction things are going… to easily assess where the changes have taken place… providing a quick means to determine where investigation into the details would be more useful and “interesting”.
Let me state that I’m not calling for a new way to spend government money… a new project to justify more expenditures. I’m suggesting all this can be done simply by realigning the preparation and presentation of data that is already going on… but with the end result having greater utility and meaning.
