Recommended reading

If you only have time to read one article
The Leaky Corporation, The Economistmagazine, 24 February 2011 http://www.economist.com/node/18226961

About Executive Transparency
Often transparency starts at the top, when CEOs and the Board decide it’s time to be more open and honest about what’s happening inside the firewall.

The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business http://www.nakedcorporation.com/about.html by Don Tapscott and David Ticoll, which was published in 2003, was one of the first books to explore how companies and government agencies have benefitted from ‘opening the kimono’.  Tapscott and his colleagues are in the middle of a major project to update and expand their earlier work on transparency.

Get Naked and Rule the World, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/ – a provocative cover story in Wired magazine published in 2007, which looked at the power of executive transparency, particularly CEO blogs.

About Transparency and Social Media
The growing use of social media, particularly by low-level and mid-level employees, is a major driver of corporate transparency.

Open Leadership:How Social Technology Can Transform How You Lead http://www.charleneli.com/open-leadership/  by Charlene Li, one of the today’s leading gurus of transparency.

About Transparency, Public Relations, and Marketing
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies http://www.forrester.com/groundswell/book.html by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li

Radically Transparent—Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online http://www.radicallytransparent.com/ by Andy Beal and Judy Strauss is an excellent, practical guide to using social media and online customer complaint sites to influence how customers, employees and investors perceive your company.

About Transparency and Government
WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency http://www.orbooks.com/our-books/wikileaks/ by Micah L Sifry, the co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum.  An excellent overview of how technology is forcing governments to become more transparent – and how governments are responding to the new rules of transparency.

Global mapping of technology for transparency and accountability (available for free at http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/05/22/technology-for-transparency-final-report/) by Renata Avila, et al is a publication of the Transparency and Accountability Initiative and provides detailed case studies from around the world demonstrating how non-governmental organizations are using information and communications technologies, particularly the Internet, SMS, and mapping tools, to monitor governments, fight corruption, and document voter fraud.

About Personal Transparency
Public Parts:  How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live, http://www.buzzmachine.com/publicparts/ This brand-new – and controversial – book by Jeff Jarvis, a well-known digital pundit, describes how he decided to practice radical transparency at a personal level and the many benefits he’s gained by doing so.