Transparent Municipalities are those that:

• hold comittee and council meetings in an open public setting, and make audio and or visual recordings and minutes of proceedings readily available in a variety of formats.
• have clear guidelines for citizen participation in the decision making process.
• have clear guidelines that outline acceptable behaviour for decision makers who are approached by citizens, lobbyists and other decision makers aiming to influence the activities of the government.
• apply GAAP as a first step to performance audits
• respect ecological and social indicators in decision making
• apply ISO 14000 to integrate environmental management? for their many functions especially related to water quality? and air quality? and habitat loss?
• apply ISO 19011 to integrate quality management in government
• accept Municipal Performance Audits as a price of the New Deal For Cities - the public must know what they are getting for their money - see tranparency? and Government Accountability
• work with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to standardize the way they characterize and justify capital asset investment, e.g. FCM infra program, in part so that a best price strategy can be applied, and so that industrial consortia can be formed to meet the new standards cost-effectively - see Civic Efficiency Group on this.
• advocate going Beyond GAAP with new PSAB standards to integrate the above, e.g. PSAB capital asset standards so it is obvious what is being paid for
• know the municipal role in emergency response and work towards emergency preparedness? by making more robust systems that function normally through emergencies, e.g. 311? services manned by teleworkers, not dependent on any central building, an Emergency Operations Centre? that is also a backup network operations centre?, modular computer hardware? that is easy to get back up and running in a disaster recovery situation;
• integrate their e-government efforts with the above needs, see a deputation on this to City of Toronto eCity committee on November 22, 2004 by Civic Efficiency Group
• are ultimately answerable to the Auditor General under that office's normal criteria, as expanded above

It is ONLY these municipalities that are in a valid moral and financial position to demand more municipal autonomy and more direct Federal-Municipal Relationships that may in some cases challenge provincial jurisdiction. The Government of Canada should not be over-riding well-run provinces to enable poorly-run cities. It is only in those conditions where the province's management of some function is markedly inferior to that of the city, that the federal government can morally intervene to ensure that the city has jurisdiction and funding to solve its own problems.