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Government Transparency and Openness: Questions for the Candidates
OMB Watch is asking for help picking the five best Open Government questions to ask the Presidential candidates. They've developed a survey on Zoomerang called The Open Government: What We Need To Know Survey. By taking the survey you can pick your five favorite questions on the issue of government transparency and openness from a list prepared by OMB Watch and add your own questions too.
The topics and questions that OMB Watch has prepared are:
Corporate Disclosure - Do you support increased corporate financial disclosure (e.g., release of corporate federal tax filings, a database of claimed corporate tax subsidies), and, if so, how would you achieve it?
Worst Abuse of Secrecy - What is government’s worst abuse of secrecy in the last ten years and how would you have handled it?
Whistleblowers - Under the Sarbanes Oxley law, only corporate whistleblowers revealing financial abuses are protected. In order to strengthen accountability against corporate crimes, would you support pending legislation that expands whistleblower protection rights to private sector workers who report violations of any federal public health and safety laws?
Improving Transparency - How should the federal government be more transparent? Suggestions: create a chief counselor for transparency in the White House; more interactive government websites (e.g. wikis and blogs); increased resources for transparency programs; greater openness of government meetings, including task forces and advisory committees.
Pseudo-Classifications - With little or no statutory authority, agencies have created more than one hundred pseudo-classification categories, which often preclude public access to environment, health and safety information. How would you reform these information categories to ensure sufficient public access?
Health, Safety & Environment - Given the importance of health and safety information, how would you ensure that the public has easy access to understandable information about the air they breathe, the water they drink, and the products they use?
Ashcroft Memo - Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a Freedom of Information Act memo urging greater caution in disclosure and establishing a presumption of withholding information. Access experts believe that this significantly reduced the release of information. Would you reverse the Ashcroft memo and reinstate a presumption of openness for government records?
Executive Privilege - What do you believe are the appropriate limits of executive privilege in the disclosure of information to Congress and the public?
Earmarks - Do you support the online disclosure of all earmarks and their sponsors before they become law?
Manipulation of Facts - Concerns have been raised about possible manipulation of information produced by agencies and the influence of the White House over agency decisions. Do you support disclosure of all communications between the White House (including the Office of Management and Budget and other executive offices) and agencies regarding administrative decision-making and information disclosure?
Requiring Full Disclosure - Government is often passive and limiting in disclosure, waiting for requests for documents and then only releasing information to requesters. Do you support reversing this dynamic and requiring that all releasable documents be proactively published online for everyone, thereby negating the need for many Freedom of Information Act requests?
Presidential Records - Executive Order 13233 limits access to presidential records under the Presidential Records Act by giving former presidents the power to effectively veto the release of their records. Do you commit to reversing Executive Order 13233 to restore public access to presidential records after twelve years?
And Finally: If you think any important questions were missing from the list, please suggest additional questions you would like to see included.
OMB Watch is a nonprofit government watchdog organization whose mission is to promote open government, accountability and citizen participation.
It'll only take a few minutes to take the survey and help select the best questions to ask the Presidential candidates on the issue of government transparency and openness.
National Dialogue on Open Government and Secrecy: Sunshine Week 2008
There's a new, updated “Save the Date” announcement for the Third National Dialogue on Open Government and Secrecy, that will take place on March 19, 2008 from 1 - 2:30 PM (EST) on the Open the Government website. The topic is "Government Secrecy: Censoring Your Right to Know" You can participate in person at the National Press Club in Washington DC, or join the conversation online anywhere. The scheduled discussions are: The Secret Executive -- What Can Congress and the Public Do? Confirmed Speakers: Mickey Edwards, Director of the Aspen Institute-Rodel Fellowships in Public Leadership and former Republican member of Congress from Oklahoma for 16 years (1977-92), Ann Beeson, Director of U.S. Programs at the Open Society Institute and previously Associate Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, and John Podesta, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for American Progress, Chief of Staff to President William J. Clinton from October 1998 until January 2001, and formerly in senior staff positions in Congress, will discuss executive branch power and secrecy, congressional rights and responsibilities, and the role of the press in combating government secrecy. Patrice McDermott, Director of OpenTheGovernment.org, will moderate the discussion. Citizen Self-Help: Finding the Information You Need We will be visiting and talking with creators of web sites that help the public avoid having to file official requests or go to offices and meetings to learn what our government is doing. These sites make hard-to-find government information -- federal, state and local -- easy for the public to find and use and may inspire you to do likewise. A quick report will be given, as well, on an initiative to develop a 21st Century Right-to-Know agenda and recommendations for the next President and Congress. In each segment, opportunities will be available for audience questions from all participants. There's lots more information on the Open the Government dot org website. The Sunshine Week website has information about activities for Sunshine Week, March 16 - 22, 2008. Continue reading
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Malamud takes on LC Copyright Database
Carl Malamud, FGI's open govt hero, has done it again! In a recent letter to Marybeth Peters, the United States Register of Copyrights, Malamud and others have asked Peters to provide bulk access to a "vital public database" -- the copyright catalog of monographs, documents, and serials. The letter recognizes that "sales of the database may be a significant source of revenue for the Copyright Office" and that "budgetary requirements or the assent of congressional oversight committees" might make it difficult to make the data available right away and offers an short term alternative of "...we would like to offer to set up a collective fund for purchase of a single copy of the database, making it available for anyone to use. This would provide a public distribution channel...." The letter also says, "We ask only that you help us clarify that there is no copyright on the database so that we may freely redistribute it." The letter was signed by the Digital Library Federation, Harvard University Library, Public Knowledge, Stanford University Library, the Association of Research Libraries, the Internet Archive and others. For more see:
The copyright catalog of monographs, documents, and serials is not a product, it is fuel that makes the copyright system work. Anybody should be able to download the entire database to their desktop, write a better search application, or use this public domain information to research copyright questions. A price tag of $86,625 places this database beyond the reach of university libraries, small businesses that wish to provide a better copyright search service, and academics or citizens wishing to analyze the copyright registration process. Additionally, setting copyright restrictions on the copyright database, a “work of the United States Government,†runs directly counter to the well-established principle that such works shall be in the public domain.I hope LC and the Copyright Office take this letter seriously and releases the database to the original owner, the public. However, I am not sure whether Ms. Peters will be amenable considering the post about her on BoingBoing a few days ago. Continue reading
Presidential Candidates: Who Will Stand Up and Be Transparent?
Calling All Presidential Candidates: Who Will Stand Up and Be Transparent?
Meet the only three would-be chief execs who will dare to tell you how the government spends your money.
by Nick Gillespie, Reason Online (August 24, 2007)
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