Armchair Auditors

Not often I agree with Phil at Whoar, but he blogged this article from the Guardian:

All government contracts worth more than £10,000 would be published online, unleashing in the words of Maude “armchair auditors” happy to crawl over government accounts. …

Councils would also be required to publish online details of all expenditure over £500, a policy already piloted in Windsor and Maidenhead.

This is a great concept. I first heard about it in July from Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. This was implemented by one State Governor and proved so popular (and effective) that many other states and cities have adopted the same policy.

In fact some states list every single cheque and payment online. You can see the Alaska one here.