The enduring problem of overclassification and the challenge of effective declassification are the subject of two public events this week.
The House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, chaired by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), will hold a hearing on Wednesday, December 7 on “examining the costs of overclassification on transparency and security.” The witnesses include former Information Security Oversight Director Bill Leonard, National Security Archive director Tom Blanton, Scott Amey of the Project on Government Oversight, and myself.
The Public Interest Declassification Board, chaired by Prof. Trevor Morrison, will hold a meeting on Thursday, December 8 to discuss potential changes that could be adopted in a future executive order on classification. More information, including advance copies of several presentations to be made at the meeting, can be found here.
January saw us watching whether the government would fund science. February has been about how that funding will be distributed, regulated, and contested.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.