William J. Bosanko was formally named this week as the fourth director of the Information Security Oversight Offfice, the executive branch agency that is responsible for oversight of national security classification and declassification policy government-wide. A ten-year veteran of the ISOO staff, Mr. Bosanko shares an understanding of the ideals and the realities of classification as well as the scruple and the responsiveness that made his predecessors such remarkable public servants.
“When I am president, the era of Bush/Cheney secrecy will be over,” said Sen. Hillary Clinton in a speech to the Newspaper Association of America on April 15. “I will empower the federal government to operate from a presumption of openness, not secrecy… I will direct my administration to prevent needless classification of information that ought to be shared with the public.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) this week introduced a new bill to increase transparency in government agency expenditures, to provide online public tracking of legislative earmarks, and to require the IRS to provide taxpayers with statements of total taxes paid and projected. “This latest effort will provide taxpayers unprecedented information about how their money is spent, and how their taxes are paid. Increasing transparency in government spending is essential for accountability and fiscal responsibility.”
The CIA today published for public comment a proposed rule modifying its Freedom of Information Act procedures. “The Agency proposes to revise its FOIA regulations to more clearly reflect the current CIA organizational structure, record system configuration, and FOIA policies and practices and to eliminate ambiguous, redundant and obsolete regulatory provisions.”
The research community lacks strategies to incentivize collaboration on high-quality data acquisition and sharing. The government should fund collaborative roadmapping, certification, collection, and sharing of large, high-quality datasets in life science.
The potential of new nuclear power plants to meet energy demand, increase energy security, and revitalize local economies depends on new regulatory and operational approaches at the NRC.
In anticipation of future known and unknown health security threats, including new pandemics, biothreats, and climate-related health emergencies, our answers need to be much faster, cheaper, and less disruptive to other operations.
To unlock the full potential of artificial intelligence within the Department of Health and Human Services, an AI Corps should be established, embedding specialized AI experts within each of the department’s 10 agencies.