American offices removed the walls, and then largely kept them off, through decades of well-documented complaints about noise and interruption. The argument that held the line was not about cost. It was that people who can see each other share more than people who cannot.
Public by default
American software companies commonly configure their internal messaging so that channels are open unless someone actively makes them private, and a private channel is something a colleague may ask about. The default is a policy. Whoever writes it has decided which way information should flow when nobody is thinking about it.
The all-hands
A regular meeting of an entire American company — sometimes thousands of people — at which leadership presents results, plans and problems, and takes questions from the floor. The format assumes that information belonging to the leadership is information belonging to everyone, and that the transfer should happen in one room at one time.
Public access to federally funded research
US policy requires that research funded by federal agencies be made freely available to the public, and the requirement has been extended and tightened over successive administrations. The reasoning is stated plainly: the public paid for it, so the public may read it.
PACER
Filings in US federal courts are accessible to the public through an online system. Complaints, motions, exhibits, orders. Litigation between two private parties produces a public record by default, and sealing any part of it requires an application and a judge’s agreement.
C-SPAN
The proceedings of both chambers of Congress are televised gavel to gavel, unedited, without commentary, and have been since 1979 in the House and 1986 in the Senate. Committee hearings, floor debate, procedural votes. The legislature is broadcast as it happens, including the parts nobody would choose to show.
The earnings call
American public companies hold a quarterly call in which executives take questions from analysts, and the recording and transcript are made public. The company’s own account of its performance is delivered in a forum it does not control, and anyone can listen.
EDGAR
Every filing every US public company makes to the Securities and Exchange Commission is published on a free public database. Annual reports, quarterly results, executive compensation, insider share sales, material events. No subscription, no registration, no reason required. A competitor, a journalist or a private individual reads the same file on the same day.
Sunshine laws
Every US state has its own open records statute, and most require public bodies to hold their meetings in public, with advance notice of the agenda. The name is the argument. The default position is that the business of public bodies is visible, and closing a session requires a stated legal reason on the record.
The Freedom of Information Act
Signed in 1966 and effective from Independence Day 1967, it establishes that any person may request records from a federal agency.
Any person. Not any citizen — a foreign national, a corporation, a journalist from another country all have the same standing. And the requester does not have to say why they want it. The burden of justification sits entirely with the agency withholding.