It’s the beginning of Sunshine Week, which has nothing to do with Daylight Saving Time, or the fact that spring is just about here. Sunshine Week is a national initiative to promote dialog about the importance of open government and freedom of information. And a new analysis by the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that focuses on transparency, has given Massachusetts a failing grade.

Out of the 50 states, Massachusetts is at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the ease and ability to get information from our state legislature’s website. The Sunlight Foundation, based in Washington DC, has just given Massachusetts a big fat F on factors such as finding complete information on the actions of a bill to how an individual lawmaker actually voted.

James Turk, the lead investigator on the Foundation’s Open States project, said the failing grade puts Massachusetts in rare company.

“Only five states have this problem on all 50 that we looked at,” Turk said. “And we’ve talked to the state, and pointed this out, and was told that not much was going to change.”

Not so, said state state Sen. Jamie Eldridge (D-Acton). He’s the first elected official in Massachusetts history to be elected as a “clean elections” candidate. Eldridge is surprised by the grade, because he thinks that the state has improved the bill-tracking process.

“But I will say that one of my frustrations is putting all roll-call votes online within the Senate, and hopefully the whole legislature, because I do think it is a bit embarrassing that the votes we take each week are not able to be seen by our constituents about how we vote for or against issues that are important to them,” Eldridge said.

Eldridge admits there is room for improvement, such as providing information that is machine-readable -- another area where Massachusetts failed. And this makes something as simple as data collection very difficult. But there is some good news from the evaluation. While Massachusetts is failing at the state level, Turk said the websites at the executive branch level are strong, particularly those of the Treasury Secretary, and the Secretary of the Commonwealth.

“The executive branch has been doing a great job but the legislature is just not keeping up with its peers in the rest of the country,” Turk said.

Or some of its neighbors here in New England. While Rhode Island also received an F for its legislature’s website, neighboring Connecticut and New Hampshire both received A’s.

“What New Hampshire did, for instance, is making all of that data available,” Turk said. “They put the whole database up online. Because it’s not private information.“

And that’s why Massachusetts lawmakers like Eldridge hope this lack of transparency ends this year.

“Right now, what my focus is, is making sure roll-call votes are put online, making sure committee votes are put online, and then hopefully down the line, we can improve the budget process as well,” he said.

And if that can happen, Massachusetts may be able to earn a passing grade.

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