President Bush issued Executive Order 13462 last week redesignating the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) as the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB), and modifying the Board’s functions and interactions with the executive branch.
The Order appeared to diminish the Board’s autonomy and to further reduce its influence, which has been negligible in recent years.
It was reported by Pamela Hess of the Associated Press in “New White House Order Bolsters Intelligence Chief’s Power,” February 29.
The new Order and the 1993 Order that it superseded were critically compared by Smintheus in Daily Kos.
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.