If I were POTUS, I would make accountability one of the highest priorities of everything I, my administration, and this government does. This means that everything is public record, either immediately or deferred. After all I would be working for the people. They should know what I am doing in my job, why I am doing it, and what is going on. Everything I do in the job is completely pertinent to them. And if I am keeping a secret, the people should wonder why. Everything should be open. This job belongs to the people and the work that is done in it belongs to the people, and they should know that they are getting their money's worth. It does not matter if it is going to create controversy, or if people are going to disagree. That is the job. It is for the people of the United States of America. It is not for the representatives or for the President. It is for the people. We are supposed to have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
If I were POTUS, I would make sure all information, reports, and related work artifacts generated by any department of the government are made available publicly, freely, and easily. This is a record of the work the government is doing on citizens’ behalf. The work would be published regardless of how it supports or opposes particular views or efforts. The work should stand on its own merits. Nothing produced by the government following unbiased approaches should be suppressed, however much we may disagree with it. No matter how controversial it may be, this information belongs to the people. It was paid for by the people, and it belongs to the people. That is how they will have the information with which they can decide what they want done.
If I were POTUS I would make my entire work schedule public. This includes with whom I am meeting and what the topics discussed are, including a full record of the meeting - maybe including direct recordings or live feed. It is the people's business. If it is live, it is not altered, redacted, edited, and is for everyone to look in on to see if I am doing my job well. I should pretty much be living in the public for this job when I working. When I'm off the clock it is different. But it should not be a secret with whom I am meeting and what is discussed. And the transcripts of those meetings belong to the people just as if I were an employee of a regular company where my conversations, emails, and phone calls are a matter of company record.
The one caveat I will include is that there are some matters of national security that are critical to be kept secret. I think these are the kinds of things that should be secret at the moment. I would figure out what the best way is to defer release of such records, but starting off with something like everything gets published in 10 years. So at least I am accountable for my actions. I am accountable for the decisions I make. I am accountable for the people with whom I met and the discussions that I had. That kind of openness even in the future would hopefully make people act more credibly than they seem to. There should be no permanent secrets.
No more secret meetings. They do not support accountability, which is a key requirements of democracy. Even our Constitution does not guarantee the right to absolute privacy (though it supports the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, requiring an accountable due process) as our forefathers recognized that complete privacy is at odds with accountability. Secret meetings are the tools of authoritarian regimes and have no place in a democracy.
Why, when we accept that it is reasonable for a company to not only be intimately aware of, but to monitor the work of its employees, are the American people okay with how much our government employees, including the one who holds the single most powerful job, to do their jobs in secrecy. They work for us. Why do we let them operate in so much secrecy?