Speaking of classification reform, Rep. Jane Harman and 13 Democratic colleagues this week introduced “The Reducing Over-Classification Act of 2007.”
The legislation focuses on the Department of Homeland Security and aims to make the Department a model of judicious information policy by curtailing classification and other restrictions on disclosure.
“The goal is simple: make the Department of Homeland Security the ‘gold standard’ when it comes to preventing over-classification and to limiting the use of sensitive but unclassified markings,” Rep. Harman said in a news release.
“DHS is an excellent place to start and — if it gets a handle on its own burgeoning over- and pseudo-classification addiction– can become a ‘best practices’ center and the test bed for the rest of the Federal Government,” she said.
The legislation’s incremental approach has much to recommend it, though some of the details of the proposed strategy are questionable, obscure or remain to be determined.
It is probably unworkable, for example, to insist on “allow[ing] the classification of documents only after unclassified, shareable versions of intelligence have been produced.” Some classified intelligence documents will have no unclassified counterpart, though the use of unclassified “tear sheets” should be encouraged whenever possible.
Other proposed steps, such as establishment of “an independent Department declassification review board to expedite the declassification of documents,” could help create new impetus for disclosure.
tudents in the 21st century need strong critical thinking skills like reasoning, questioning, and problem-solving, before they can meaningfully engage with more advanced domains like digital, data, or AI literacy.
When the U.S. government funds the establishment of a platform for testing hundreds of behavioral interventions on a large diverse population, we will start to better understand the interventions that will have an efficient and lasting impact on health behavior.
The grant comes from the Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY) to investigate, alongside The British American Security Information Council (BASIC), the associated impact on nuclear stability.
We need to overhaul the standardized testing and score reporting system to be more accessible to all of the end users of standardized tests: educators, students, and their families.