In the past, the authorities – companies and the states – had all the rights to have secrects, while individuals were entitled to a more limited amount of privacy.
That should be changed, since it is counterproductive and immoral.
Secrets can temporarily warrant a better public face to any entity or person by suppressing information which could collide with its public image as being perfect and infallible.
However, if thing are not going well – and today things definitely do not go well – every secret is passed for a lie. Trust can not be built up with the present system of industrial and state secrets staying intact.
Companies should embrace, governments should embrace and enforce the policy of radical openness.
Individuals should have sufficient amount of rights to privacy, since we tend to be happier when we can preserve a better face and higher esteem in the society, better than what we have earned through our deeds. And one of the principal raison-d’etre of the state is to ensure every citizen the chance to live a happy life.
The happiness of organizations is not a priority anywhere. Organizations should be effective and frugal to maximize financial profit (companies) and social profit (state and not-for-profits). They need a healthy competition environment, but they should not be warranted a facelift through secrets.
Radical openness means, that every bit of information, that is important about the overall functioning or about the specific products and services, should be available freely to everyone. Every information a major shareholder, a department head, an auditor or a quality controller gets, should be there and up-to-the-date on the Internet.
The relative drawback they suffer do not make up to the benefits: greater trust, greater focus and efficiency, smaller corruption and shorter lifespan of incompetent or flawed operations.
