I have endeavored to compile links to all of the databases of government employees with names and salaries hosted by online newspapers, consumer watchdog organizations and government agencies. on the PI buzz page Government Employees.

In the past few years, general circulation newspapers have furthered the cause of government transparency by providing searchable databases of government employees and their salaries. Although these are federal, state, county and municipal government public records the corresponding government agencies may not have made these available at their websites. Government agency sites sometimes post a staff list or employee directory — not salaries — with name, telephone number and email. Often, school districts don’t list staff beyond those in the top level administration, but school sites that have their own Web pages may have a staff and faculty directory with names of administrators and teachers. An example of a very flexible school staff and teacher directory is hosted by the Ventura County Office of Education. Search by district, school or employee last name to find the district, school site, job title and phone number (Internet Explorer, only).

The disadvantage of the separate databases is you have to know which one to search in order to verify a place of employment. The Bay Area News Group continues to amass the payroll for California state, court and local workers in its aggregated Public Employees Salary database. The most recent data is from 2012 and includes about a dozen northern California counties and four southern California ones. It also has state, university and judicial employees. This is one of the few government employees and salary databases that incorporates multiple jurisdictions. Many state governments have developed online transparency sites of the annual budget and payroll, including names of workers. I’ve organized all the links by state. Only sites and documents that have employee names are linked to.