21st Century Right to Know: Transition Recommendations
Ideally, the change of presidential administrations would be the occasion for a transformation in the relationship between government and the public, in which government information becomes easily and rapidly accessible to all interested parties.
With that possibility in mind, dozens of public interest organizations concerned with access to government information (including FAS) have collaborated to develop actionable recommendations for the new administration to promote open, accountable government.
The process, convened and led by OMB Watch, produced a 112-page volume (pdf) that addresses transparency, access, national security secrecy, freedom of information policy, and related topics. See “Moving Towards a 21st Century Right to Know Agenda: Recommendations to President-Elect Obama and Congress.”
Other transition-related initiatives on open government were compiled on the Sunshine Week web site. See “Groups Call for Transparency in New President’s Administration.”
And others yet are still to come.
With targeted policy interventions, we can efficiently and effectively support the U.S. innovation economy through the translation of breakthrough scientific research from the lab to the market.
Crowd forecasting methods offer a systematic approach to quantifying the U.S. intelligence community’s uncertainty about the future and predicting the impact of interventions, allowing decision-makers to strategize effectively and allocate resources by outlining risks and tradeoffs in a legible format.
The energy transition underway in the United States continues to present a unique set of opportunities to put Americans back to work through the deployment of new technologies, infrastructure, energy efficiency, and expansion of the electricity system to meet our carbon goals.
The United States has the only proven and scalable tritium production supply chain, but it is largely reserved for nuclear weapons. Excess tritium production capacity should be leveraged to ensure the success of and U.S. leadership in fusion energy.