Open government is the governing doctrine which holds that citizens have the right to access the documents and proceedings of the government to allow for effective public oversight. In its broadest construction it opposes reason of state and racist considerations, which have tended to legitimize extensive state secrecy. The origins of open government arguments can be dated to the time of the European Enlightenment: to debates about the proper construction of a then nascent democratic society.

Among recent developments is the theory of open source governance, which advocates the application of the free software movement to democratic principles, enabling interested citizens to get more directly involved in the legislative process.

In the West, the idea that government should be open to public scrutiny and susceptible to public opinion dates back at least to the time of the Enlightenment, when many philosophes made an attack on absolutist doctrine of state secrecy, a core part of their intellectual project. The passage of formal legislative instruments to this end can also be traced to this time with Sweden, for example, (which then included Finland as a Swedish-governed territory) enacting free press legislation as part of its constitution (Freedom of the Press Act, 1766). This approach, and that of the philosophes more broadly, is strongly related to recent historiography on the eighteenth-century public sphere.

Darrell Edward Issa (/ˈaɪsə/; Arabic: عيسى‎; born November 1, 1953) is the U.S. Representative for California's 49th congressional district, serving since 2001. He is a member of the Republican Party. He was formerly a CEO of Directed Electronics, the Vista, California-based manufacturer of automobile security and convenience products. His district consists of portions of southern Riverside County and northern San Diego County. The district was numbered as the 48th District during his first term and was renumbered the 49th after the 2000 Census. Since January 2011, he has served as Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Issa is a self-made millionaire with a net worth estimated between $220 and $448 million, making him one of the wealthiest members of Congress. He was a major contributor to the 2003 recall election of Governor Gray Davis.

Issa was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the second of six children. His mother was a Mormon and his father Eastern Orthodox. Issa is the grandson of Lebanese immigrants.

Samantha Power (born September 21, 1970) is an Irish American academic, governmental official and writer. She is currently a Special Assistant to President Barack Obama and runs the Office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights as Senior Director of Multilateral Affairs on the Staff of the National Security Council. She is also the Founding Executive Director and the Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Power began her career by covering the Yugoslav Wars as a journalist, and was a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for her book A Problem from Hell, a study of the U.S. foreign policy response to genocide. She was originally a senior adviser to Obama until March 2008 when she resigned from his presidential campaign under controversy. After rejoining the Obama State Department transition team in late November 2008, she was named to her position in the new administration. Power is considered to be perhaps the key figure within the Obama administration in persuading the president to intervene militarily in Libya.

Valerie Bowman Jarrett (born November 14, 1956) is a senior advisor and assistant to the president for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs for the Obama administration. She is a Chicago lawyer, businesswoman, and civic leader. Prior to that she served as a co-chairperson of the Obama-Biden Transition Project.

Jarrett was born in Shiraz, Iran to American parents James E. Bowman and Barbara Taylor Bowman. Her father, a pathologist and geneticist, ran a hospital for children in Shiraz, as part of a program where American doctors and agricultural experts sought to help jump-start developing countries' health and farming efforts. When she was five, the family moved to London for one year, returning to Chicago in 1963.

In 1966 her mother, Barbara T. Bowman, was one of four child advocates that created the Erikson Institute. The Institute was established to provide advanced knowledge in child development for teachers and other professionals working with young children.

As a child she spoke Persian and French.