Government transparency is something Texas Watchdog works toward every day. Through public records requests, phone calls and e-mails we encourage all forms of government to make documents available to the people who own those records, the public.

One issue governments face is deciding how best to make information public, especially the massive data sets of information they control. Texas Comptroller Susan Combs spoke about this issue last week at the The Texas Tribune's TribLive event in Austin.

"We've gotta figure out how you can dump it, get it to folks," Combs tells the crowd in this video posted by the Tribune. She said making information available puts the onus for searching it on the public, not just officials. "When you give the public the information, then the sort of, 'Shame on you,' passes to the public. The public had better go search the information."

Combs also discussed efforts to put check registers for local governments in Texas online, so that the public can see each payment made by a government agency.

The Combs event was helpd as part of the online news organization's TribLive conversation series with newsmakers.