Congress Approves 2012 Intelligence Authorization
Congress last week enacted the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012.
“The legislation we are approving today keeps funding for intelligence essentially flat from fiscal year 2011, representing the a meaningful reduction from the President’s request,” said Senate Intelligence Committee chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) on December 14.
Curiously, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, described the outcome somewhat differently on December 16: “The bill is significantly below the President’s budget request for fiscal year 2012 and further still below the levels authorized and appropriated in fiscal year 2011.”
In both the House and the Senate action on the bill there was a conspicuous absence of public debate on any issue of intelligence policy. No dissenting views were expressed. Nor was there any discussion of or insight into current intelligence controversies. For that, one must turn to other venues, such as “Secrecy defines Obama’s drone war” by Karen DeYoung in today’s Washington Post.
No one will be surprised if we end up with a continuing resolution to push our shutdown deadline out past the midterms, so the real question is what else will they get done this summer?
Rebuilding public participation starts with something simple — treating the public not as a problem to manage, but as a source of ingenuity government cannot function without.
If the government wants a system of learning and adaptation that improves results in real time, it has to treat translation, utilization, and adaptation as core functions of governance rather than as afterthoughts.
Coordination among federal science agencies is essential to ensure government-wide alignment on R&D investment priorities. However, the federal R&D enterprise suffers from egregious siloization.