New legislation to restore due process protections for federal employees who serve in “sensitive” positions was introduced last week by Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton. Her bill was prompted by a widely criticized court ruling last August (in Kaplan v. Conyers and MSPB) that effectively stripped existing protections from such employees.
The latest annual report from Openthegovernment.org examines the most recent indicators of secrecy in the federal government, noting continuing difficulty in curbing national security secrecy.
A new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists on “The Obama Administration and the Press” says that “government officials are increasingly afraid to talk to the press” due to invasive and punitive responses to unauthorized disclosures.
A new book on Lee Harvey Oswald’s sojourn in the Soviet Union was reviewed by Priscilla Johnson McMillan in Max Holland’s Washington Decoded. Ms. McMillan, author of the genuinely extraordinary 1977 volume Marina and Lee (reissued last summer), must be the only person ever to have known both JFK and Oswald. In her book review, she finds significant virtues and faults in the new book, The Interloper by Peter Savodnik.
To secure the U.S. bio-infrastructure, maintain global leadership in biotechnology, and safeguard American citizens from emerging threats to their privacy, the federal government must modernize its approach to human genetic and biological data.
To ensure an energy transition that brings broad based economic development, participation, and direct benefits to communities, we need federal policy that helps shape markets. Unfortunately, there is a large gap in understanding of how to leverage federal policy making to support access to capital and credit.
From use to testing to deployment, the scaffolding for responsible integration of AI into high-risk use cases is just not there.
OPM’s new HR 2.0 initiative is entering hostile terrain. Those who have followed federal HR modernization for years desperately want this effort to succeed.