"When you have to undress in public, you tend to watch your weight." That's what one of my former professors said. He was talking about securities offerings, but the statement applies equally to government.

North Dakota has a tradition of open government, which I believe has contributed to honesty and integrity in our government and to the generally high level of confidence we North Dakotans have in our state and local governments.

Sure, there are common sense exceptions, insuring privacy for things like individual income tax returns filed with the state. And we don't want government to publish on the Internet social security numbers and similar information that could be used to steal someone's identity. But greater openness generally promotes public confidence in government, and promoting confidence in the processes that affect the lives of people is an important goal for everyone in public life.

The Internet has created dramatic new ways to make government open and accessible - not just to the news media - but to the public at large.

Our Supreme Court has been a national and international leader in the use of technology, and we've been asked to advise other states and nations on making courts accessible over the Internet. We're proud that a major newspaper of our state labeled our court as "Supremely accessible."

We've made a vast amount of information available on our Web site: www.ndcourts.gov and we're constantly adding more information. We now have about 2,000 subscribers to our free e-mail news and notice system. Anyone can be added by clicking on "Subscribe" on virtually any page on our Web site.

We post our court's calendar on the Web site with information about each case, including links to the briefs filed by the parties and to a "plain-English" case summary. During oral arguments, anyone can listen to the webcast live. The argument recordings are permanently available for later listening on our Web site. We know that many people listen in, and the news media can cover arguments without being physically present in our courtroom, or even in Bismarck.

On the day cases are decided, we post the full text of the opinions together with the legal highlights of the cases, and we send e-mail notices to our subscribers. When people read about the decisions in the newspaper, they can go to our Web site and read the full opinions and even read the briefs and listen to the oral arguments.

Other material available on our Web site includes extensive information about courts, judges, lawyers, rules, notices and news; and forms for lawyers and for those who choose to represent themselves in court proceedings.

We recently added extensive new information about our trial courts, which are called "district courts." The district court calendars, on a county-by-county basis, are available on our Web site. Internet searches can be made of district court dockets for past or current cases. Our court committees worked with representatives of the news media and other interested entities in developing a progressive system of electronic access.

North Dakota was an early leader in allowing in our courtrooms "enhanced media coverage" - cameras for newspapers, and audio and video recording for radio and television. The rules developed by media, prosecutor, defense-lawyer and judicial representatives have worked well, with few problems.

Another area of significant media-judicial-lawyer cooperation was the development in the early 1970s of the North Dakota Fair Trial-Free Press Council guidelines for adult criminal proceedings. Chaired by my late father-in-law, Jack Hagerty, longtime editor of the Grand Forks Herald, the Council identified factual information that should be available to the public at or immediately following an arrest, and opinions or other information that could jeopardize a fair trial that should not be made public when a person is arrested.

Our programs of "Taking the Court to the Schools" and providing training for social studies teachers are additional ways of providing access to and greater understanding of our judicial system.

We've made great progress in providing a judicial system in which the public can have confidence, and we continue to look for ways to do more.

I'd like to see our court follow the lead of other state supreme courts in providing not only the audio but also the video of oral arguments over the Internet, but we may need the help of the legislature to do that. I'd like to see more of our court committees follow the lead of the Joint Procedure Committee and the Court Technology Committee in posting more detailed meeting agendas and supporting documents. And it may be time for a new media-judicial-lawyer group to revisit and revise or reaffirm the guidelines affecting fair trials and free press.