Confronted by a government that seems intent on erecting unnecessary new barriers to public access, members of the public are not entirely without resources to oppose such barriers, and even to overcome them.
“Decrying secrecy, citizen groups fight back” is the thrilling headline of a story by reporter Aliya Sternstein in Federal Computer Week today (2/27/06) which explores the withdrawal of government information from the world wide web, and the public response.
“More federal agencies are taking data off the Web, while citizens seek ways to restore public access,” as described in the article.
“The concerted use of the Freedom of Information Act by public interest groups and their constituents” offers one way of recovering public access to official information that has been removed from government websites, advises law professor and librarian Susan Nevelow Mart in a new paper.
See “Let the People Know the Facts: Can Government Information Removed from the Internet Be Reclaimed?” (pdf), Law Library Journal, Volume 98, No. 1 (2006).
To fight the climate crises, we must do more than connect power plants to the grid: we need new policy frameworks and expanded coalitions to facilitate the rapid transformation of the electricity system.
Without information, without factual information, you can’t act. You can’t relate to the world you live in. And so it’s super important for us to be able to monitor what’s happening around the world, analyze the material, and translate it into something that different audiences can understand.
There is a lot to like in OPM’s new memos on federal hiring and senior executives, much of which reformers have been after for years, but there’s also a troubling focus on politicizing the federal workforce.
FAS is excited to announce it has acquired MetroLab Network (MLN), bringing together two teams with a shared commitment to harnessing science, technology and innovation to drive impact in new ways in communities across the country.