"Transparency" is on many tongues, in discussions of the media, big corporations, governments and any other organization and how they should operate. It came up tonight at the IESG Plenary here. I suspect transparency is overblown as a solution to all ills.

In the example tonight, an IETF participant felt that a proposal had been improperly blocked by an area director. The IETF participant felt that an opaque process allowed the improper behavior to remain unobvious for a long time. But really, in what way can transparency fix that? The same personality clashes and technical disagreements will still occur, and any sufficiently flexible and powerful process is subject to being affected by those who run it.