Wilmette Receives Award for 'Perfect Transparency'

The Village of Wilmette was recognized with a Sunny Award Thursday for its perfect transparent government website.

In its second year, the Sunny Awards are an annual event that honor local and state government websites across the United States that exceeded transparency standards. The awards are hosted by the Sunshine Review, a Virginia-based non-profit that promotes proactive disclosure of government information online.

"We’re pleased with it because part of the re-design we went through for the new web page, was to make it more functional so that residents could get more information, more easily," Village Manager Timothy Frenzer told Patch.

Cities and villages are graded via a checklist that monitors if budgets, schedules, agendas and contact information for officials are readily available on municipal sites, according to Kristin McMcurray, a senior editor for Sunshine Review, told Patch. "One sticking point is that we ask they post their emails, not a contact form, so that people can choose when they want to contact officials," McMurray said.

Initially Wilmette received an A- for its site, but local officials quickly reviewed the checklist and made some minor changes to receive an A+, McMurray told Patch.

"At 8:30 a.m. they had an 'A-', but by 9:30 a.m. they had an 'A+'." she said, "I was really excited that they updated so quickly. . .I also like that they have a transparency page that's so useable."

Wilmette's site bucks the national trend, according to McMurray. "There are a lot of local governments that are struggling to keep their sites up to date," she said.

"Sunny Award winners deserve recognition for making information available to citizens and for setting a transparency standard that all governments can, and should, meet,” Mike Barnhart, President of Sunshine Review, wrote in a statement. “Access to information empowers every citizen to hold government officials accountable. Official accountability is the cornerstone of self government and liberty.”

In an effort to expand the information residents can access online, the village board announced Tuesday that all of its meetings will be streamed online. Additionally, board meetings for the park district, zoning commission, library and school district are also set to run their respective websites.

"Our job is to keep the site current." Frenzer said, "Beyond this award we’re looking ot use ways to help communication to inform our residents."