21st Century Right to Know: Transition Recommendations
Ideally, the change of presidential administrations would be the occasion for a transformation in the relationship between government and the public, in which government information becomes easily and rapidly accessible to all interested parties.
With that possibility in mind, dozens of public interest organizations concerned with access to government information (including FAS) have collaborated to develop actionable recommendations for the new administration to promote open, accountable government.
The process, convened and led by OMB Watch, produced a 112-page volume (pdf) that addresses transparency, access, national security secrecy, freedom of information policy, and related topics. See “Moving Towards a 21st Century Right to Know Agenda: Recommendations to President-Elect Obama and Congress.”
Other transition-related initiatives on open government were compiled on the Sunshine Week web site. See “Groups Call for Transparency in New President’s Administration.”
And others yet are still to come.
“The first rule of government transformation is: there are a lot of rules. And there should be-ish. But we don’t need to wait for permission to rewrite them. Let’s go fix and build some things and show how it’s done.”
To better understand what might drive the way we live, learn, and work in 2050, we’re asking the community to share their expertise and thoughts about how key factors like research and development infrastructure and automation will shape the trajectory of the ecosystem.
Recognizing the power of the national transportation infrastructure expert community and its distributed expertise, ARPA-I took a different route that would instead bring the full collective brainpower to bear around appropriately ambitious ideas.
NIH needs to seriously invest in both the infrastructure and funding to undertake rigorous nutrition clinical trials, so that we can rapidly improve food and make progress on obesity.