Sunshine Week Events Re-cap
Monday, March 17: American University's Washington College of Law's Collaboration on Government Secrecy hosted its first Freedom of Information Day, featuring panels and speakers addressing new FOIA legislation, the state secrets privilege, and transparency. They also presented the first "Robert Vaughn FOIA Legend Award" to Thomas M. Susman, a government openness advocate and initial drafter of the 1974 FOIA Amendments. Tuesday, March 18: Associated Press President and CEO Tom Curley discussed Freedom of Information and other open government issues during a Sunshine Week dinner event at The National Press Club. The speech looked ahead to priorities in the new administration, an update to Curley's 2004 Hays-Enterprise Lecture, which many view as a defining moment in moving forward efforts to preserve and protect access to information. The full text of Curley's speech can be found at the Sunshine Week website. Wednesday, March 19: OpenTheGovernment.org, among others, sponsored the 3rd annual Sunshine Week National Dialogue on Open Government and Secrecy. This year's panel discussions focused on "Government Secrecy: Censoring Your Right to Know". The webcast is archived and will also be available soon at OpenTheGovernment.org and the event will be on a DVD available for purchase. They also compiled a list of legislation and resources about government secrecy and related issues. Continue reading
Bush Hits the Delete Button
Bush Hits the Delete Button: Public information the administration doesn't want you to see, by Paul Kiel, Utne Reader, March-April 2008.
Since 2006 ... the investigative website TPMmuckraker.com [has] been keeping a running tally of the diminishing access to government information. Reporter Steve Benen got the list started over at his own blog, the Carpetbagger Report. Then his fellow Muckrakers joined in by trawling the news and--as is the website's custom--tapping the collective wisdom of their readers to cobble together a dossier on an administration that has, as deputy editor Paul Kiel writes, "discontinued annual reports, classified normally public data, de-funded studies, quieted underlings, and generally done whatever was necessary to keep bad information under wraps." Here, Utne Reader presents an excerpted (but not redacted) version of the list Kiel continues to compile. [Bush Admin: What You Don't Know Can't Hurt Us, 2007 Version By Paul Kiel - November 23, 2007.]Continue reading
Communications Inside GPO
GPO will be presenting information about its internal communications at the conference Strategic Internal Communications In Government - West: Engaging Employees To Drive Change in June in San Diego, CA.
Jeffrey S. Brooke, ABC, Director of Employee Communications, and Terri C. Ehrenfeld, Employee Communications Specialist will be presenting. Here is the abstract of their presenation:
Ghosts, New Years’ Resolutions and Other Agency Information: How To Create Simple Employee Polls That Gather And Distribute Important Information The U.S. Government Printing Of?ce (GPO) started polling employees on October 31, 2007 with this question: Do you believe in ghosts? From this humorous beginning, a weekly employee poll located on the home page of GPO’s intranet site caught on like wild?re. GPO’s Employee Communications Of?ce uses their weekly polls to gather business-related information, to solicit suggestions, to entertain – and to provide education and resources. In this presentation you will learn how to:Continue readingThis session will provide a live demonstration to show how easy it is to create your own employee poll.
- Use simple, commercially-available software to launch your own employee polls
- Promote the poll site to employees and encourage participation
- Create a mix of questions that gathers and distributes valuable information – and uses educational entertainment to keep employees coming back for more
Iraqi Perspectives Project Report Put Online by FAS not DoD
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) now has online all five volumes of the Iraqi Perspectives Project report, which the Department of Defense (DoD) refused to put online.
- The announcement: DoD Report on Captured Iraqi Documents by Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News, March 20, 2008.
- The five volume report: Iraqi Perspectives Project Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents (Redacted) Institute for Defense Analyses November 2007 (released March 2008)
FDA.gov Gets a Makeover
Have you visited FDA.gov lately? *swoon* According to the FDA, they redesigned their home page because, "In a nutshell, we listened to you. We tested the usability of our Web site by asking our key audiences". This site should serve as a model for other government agency websites to follow, in my humble opinion. The content avoids jargon and everything is structured in a way that makes it so easy to scan and find what you need. Continue reading