There is a distinction between output transparency and input transparency. Suppose, for example, the Department of Transportation completes a detailed study of the kinds of policies that help reduce deaths on the highways; the Department of Labor produces an analysis of the health risks associated with exposure to silica in the workplace; or the Environmental Protection Agency produces a regulation to curtail greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles or adopts a policy about when it will bring enforcement actions against those who violate its water quality regulations. All of these are outputs. The government might also become aware of certain facts—for example, the level of inflation in European nations, the number of people who have died in federal prisons, the apparent plans of terrorist organizations, or levels of crime and air pollution in Los Angeles and Chicago. For the most part, facts should also be seen as outputs, at least if they are a product of some kind of process of information acquisition.

David E Pozen; Michael Schudson, Troubling Transparency- The…, loc. 912