Slowly and unevenly, the Obama Administration’s open government message is filtering down to the agency level.
We have entered “a new era of open government,” Army officials informed a government audience recently. There will be “increased emphasis on the Freedom of Information Act… Agency FOIA programs must be improved… Commanders need to direct all agency personnel to place a higher priority on timely assistance to FOIA personnel.”
The FOIA requester “is not an adversary,” the Army FOIA Management Conference was told, according to November 2009 briefing slides (pdf) that were released last month.
In reality, many FOIA proceedings are quite adversarial. But perhaps the Army meant that both FOIA requesters and FOIA responders are part of the same process, and therefore ought to cooperate as far as possible. It’s a wholesome message to send.
Good information sources, like collections, must be available and maintained if companies are going to successfully implement the vision of AI for science expressed by their marketing and executives.
Let’s see what rules we can rewrite and beliefs we can reset: a few digital service sacred cows are long overdue to be put out to pasture.
Nestled in the cuts and investments of interest to the S&T community is a more complex story of how the administration is approaching the practice of science diplomacy.
Surprise! It’s a double album drop with the release of both the President’s Budget Request (PBR to us, not Pabst Blue Ribbon) and the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Budget Justification for Fiscal Year 2027 (FY27) last Friday.