TRANSPARENCY: University of Tennessee launches transparency database that includes contracts, salaries.

Want to know about a University of Tennessee contract? How about a UT employee’s salary?

Those items and more will be available online as part of interim President Randy Boyd’s push to make it easier to find information about the UT System.

The initiative, called “Transparent UT,” will provide public access to information in a centralized online location. The website includes many items often requested of the school system. . . .

Boyd said accountability and transparency is central to who he is as a businessman. Since his appointment as interim president in September, many residents have said they’d like to see more information about how the UT system operates as well as data on its school’s outcomes, he said.

“Not that we haven’t been transparent before, but we will be even more so,” said Boyd during a meeting last week with The Tennessean’s editorial board.

“The core way to empowerment is information.”

The site, tennessee.edu/transparency, will include:

Information on enrollment, student demographics, degrees awarded, retention, graduation rates, post-graduation outcomes, student quality indicators, the number of faculty, faculty workload, research activity, economic development, revenues and expenditures;
Information about the university’s presence and impact in each county;
A searchable employee salary database;
Tuition information;
Executive staff and coaching contracts for each campus;
Information about how the system is funded and how funds are spent;
Other various annual reports;
And endowment investment information.

Some of this stuff — like salaries — was already online but hard to find, but this will put it all together and I think it’s a good idea.