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Eye On Boise

Officials from Bhutan visit Idaho to explore government transparency, public trust…

From left, Mr. Dorji Dhap, Mr. Namgay Wangchuk, and Eileen Maloy, a international visitor liaison for the State Department; and Ms. Dorji Wangmo, Mr. Chencho, and Ms. Tashi Pem, a delegation of officials from the government of Bhutan, in Boise on Thursday  (Betsy Z. Russell)
From left, Mr. Dorji Dhap, Mr. Namgay Wangchuk, and Eileen Maloy, a international visitor liaison for the State Department; and Ms. Dorji Wangmo, Mr. Chencho, and Ms. Tashi Pem, a delegation of officials from the government of Bhutan, in Boise on Thursday (Betsy Z. Russell)

Groups of international visitors come to Idaho from time to time as part of the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program, an exchange program first launched in 1940 that now brings nearly 5,000 current and emerging foreign leaders a year to U.S. communities for short-term visits. This morning, I had the pleasure of meeting with a five-person delegation from Bhutan that’s interested in government transparency and accountability issues, along with human resources management, ethics and public trust. They were also really interested in tribal-state relations.

I shared information about IDOG, Idahoans for Openness in Government, and my work as a newspaper reporter and president of the Idaho Press Club. They had questions about everything from the interrelationship between FOIA and the state public records law to the question of charging fees for public records requests to when government transparency has down sides.

The delegation included Mr. Chencho, head of the government performance management division in the Office of the Prime Minister; Mr. Dori Dhap, deputy chief accounts officer; Ms. Tashi Pem, collector for the ministry of finance; Mr. Namgay Wangchuk, acting chief human resources officer; and Ms. Dori Wangmo, chief planning officer for the Ministry of Works and Human Settlement. All are young and highly educated, and play key roles in their nation’s government on everything from technology to infrastructure development to reforming their nation’s civil service system.

The group previously spent time in Mississippi and Washington, D.C.; while in Idaho, they’re meeting with groups from the Idaho Freedom Foundation to the Legislature’s Office of Performance Evaluations to the state controller’s office, the state Board of Education’s accountability oversight committee, the Ada County Highway District, and a citizens group in Fruitland that is concerned about oil and gas development. They’re touring Lucky Peak Dam, visiting the Western Idaho Fair, touring the Fort Hall Indian Reservation and meeting with officials there, and discussing relationships between tribes and local government with a political scientist at Idaho State University in Pocatello. After Idaho, they’ll head to Portland, Ore.

Mowbray Brown, who serves on the local committee that helps coordinate the visits, said international delegations visiting Idaho often have had an agricultural focus or have been interested in exploring the relationships between local, state and federal government; one recent one consisted of women farmers from Moldova. Next month, a group from eastern Europe that’s interested in developing support for the arts, particularly theater, from both public and private sources will visit.

So who picked the groups the visitors are meeting with? The State Department. According to the department’s website, the exchanges “reflect the participants’ professional interests and support the foreign policy goals of the United States.” Since the program’s launch, more than 200,000 international visitors have participated, including more than 335 current or former chiefs of state or heads of government.

The Bhutan delegation's objectives, among others, include exploring the roles of media, watchdog organizations and citizen groups in supporting and monitoring good governance.



Betsy Z. Russell
Betsy Z. Russell joined The Spokesman-Review in 1991. She currently is a reporter in the Boise Bureau covering Idaho state government and politics, and other news from Idaho's state capital.

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