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).
By better harnessing the power of data, we can build a learning healthcare system where outcomes drive continuous improvement and where healthcare value leads the way.
In this unprecedented inflection point (and time of difficult disruption) for higher education, science funding, and agency structure, we have an opportunity to move beyond incremental changes and advocate for bold, new ideas that envision a future of the scientific research enterprise that looks very different from the current system.
Assigning persistent digital identifiers (Digital Object Identifiers, or DOIs) and using ORCIDs (Open Researcher and Contributor IDs) for key personnel to track outputs for research grants will improve the accountability and transparency of federal investments in research and reduce reporting burden.
Research funding agencies should apply the content of grant applications to AI tools to predict the future of scientific and technological breakthroughs, enhance peer review, and encourage better research investment decisions by both the public and the private sector.