Government oversight can take diverse forms even among Western democracies.
A new report from the Law Library of Congress surveys the mechanisms of parliamentary oversight of the executive branch in Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
In Sweden, for example, “Any member of the public may ask the JO [Justitieombudsman, or parliamentary ombudsman] to investigate a breach of law committed by an agency or employee. The complaint must be made in writing and cannot be anonymous.”
The Law Library report does not provide comparative analysis, but simply presents a descriptive summary of each nation’s government oversight practices, with links to additional resources. Any policy conclusions to be drawn are left to the reader.
See Parliamentary Oversight of the Executive Branch, Law Library of Congress, August 2017.
Denice Ross, former U.S. Chief Data Scientist and Data Policy Institute lead at the Federation of American Scientists, will be honored for her stewardship of public data by the National Academy of Public Administration, where she has been named a Fellow.
Confirmation that the construction of the security perimeter and associated security infrastructure at RAF Lakenheath are still ongoing once again raises questions about whether U.S. nuclear weapons have already been deployed to the base.
Alaskans are sensibly pulling back from the vogue for bans and returning to a western tradition that has worked for more than half a century – one that welcomes innovation but also oversees it closely.
The strength of our nation’s data policy isn’t just in the rules we write, but in how effectively we translate those rules into a system that prioritizes the public good. Join us in this movement to design and build more resilient national data policies.