[Infowarrior] - Public Input on Open Government Solicited

[Richard Forno]

Public Input on Open Government Solicited
February 16th, 2010 by Steven Aftergood
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2010/02/public_input.html

The Obama Administration’s open government initiative might possibly  
inspire a transformation in the character of government operations  
along with an expansion of citizen engagement in policy development.   
But in order to succeed, it needs some thoughtful, creative input from  
members of the public.

All Cabinet level agencies (and a few others) have now prepared Open  
Government Webpages to document their progress in improving  
transparency and to solicit public suggestions for how to proceed,  
including recommendations for development of the Open Government Plans  
that will define each agency’s transparency program.

What this means is that “openness” is becoming incorporated into the  
bureaucratic machinery of government.  While executive branch agencies  
remain constrained by security restrictions, resource limits and other  
considerations, these rule-driven organizations are being given some  
new rules to follow.

But the actual contours of the new thrust towards openness — its  
scope, its content, its urgency — depend significantly on the quality  
of feedback and support that the initiative receives from the  
interested public.

Agencies need specific, achievable, actionable suggestions for how to  
meet their new openness obligations.  Each agency’s openness webpage  
(linked here) invites readers to “share your ideas” on how to  
proceed.  There has never been a better time for concerned citizens to  
help shape the government transparency agenda.  (Actually, there has  
never been a “government transparency agenda” before.)

And there is a premium on good ideas.  Proposals that are  
unintelligible, impractical, irrelevant, or inane are effectively  
endorsements of the status quo because they cannot be implemented.

What kind of ideas would be useful and appropriate?  Those who already  
interact with each particular agency will be in the best position to  
say what that agency could and should provide to help advance the  
Administration’s declared goals of transparency, participation and  
collaboration.

But one general approach to the issue is to consider the diverse  
categories of government information that have been removed from  
public access over the past decade, and to use those as a metaphorical  
trail of bread crumbs leading back to a more transparent posture.   
Restoring access to that missing information could help agencies to  
reorient their policies and to chart a new direction forward.  And it  
is clearly within the realm of possibility, since it has already been  
done.

So, for example, these are some suggestions that we have submitted for  
agency consideration:

Restore public access to the Los Alamos Technical Report Library.   
Until 2002, thousands of unclassified technical reports from Los  
Alamos National Laboratory dating back half a century and longer were  
publicly available on the Lab web site.  And then they weren’t.  They  
constitute an invaluable archive of technological development,  
historical information, and current scientific research.  A sizable  
fraction of the sequestered reports have been republished on the  
Federation of American Scientists website.  But the entire collection,  
with updated content since 2002, should be restored to the public  
domain.

Restore public access to orbital element data.  For many years, NASA  
provided direct public access to so-called Two-Line Element sets that  
characterize the orbits of the many objects in Earth orbit that are  
tracked by Air Force surveillance, including active and defunct U.S.  
and foreign spacecraft, as well as significant debris.  In 2004, open  
public access was terminated.  That step should be reversed.

Publish the Defense Department telephone directory.  For decades, the  
Pentagon telephone directory served as a public guide to the complex  
structure of the Department of Defense, and provided a way to  
establish direct contact with individual offices and officials.  It  
was always for sale at the Government Printing Office Bookstore to  
anyone who cared to buy it.  But in 2001, the DoD telephone directory  
was designated “for official use only.”  In the interests of  
“openness, participation, and collaboration,” public access to the DoD  
directory should be restored.  (Other agencies with national security  
and foreign policy missions including the Department of Energy and the  
Department of State already make their personnel directories available  
online.)

There must be countless other possibilities for moving towards a more  
open, responsive and accountable government.  Some will be of broad  
interest, while others may serve a specialized constituency.  Some  
will be easily achievable, others may require new investments or new  
modes of operation.  But all of a sudden, “openness” is on the  
government-wide agenda in a way that it has never been before.  The  
opportunities are there to be seized.