Many of the hundreds or thousands of reports that are submitted to Congress by executive branch agencies each year may be published online pursuant to a provision in the new Consolidated Appropriations Act (HR 1158, section 8092).
That provision states that any agency that is funded by the Act shall post on its website any report to Congress “upon the determination by the head of the agency that it shall serve the national interest.”
The impact of the latter condition is unclear, particularly since no criteria for satisfying the national interest are defined. In any case, reports containing classified or proprietary information would be exempt from publication online, and publication of all reports would be deferred for at least 45 days after their receipt by Congress, diminishing their relevance, timeliness and news value.
Reports to Congress often contain new information and perspectives but they are an under-utilized resource particularly because they are not readily available.
Some otherwise unpublished 2019 reports address, for example, DoD use of open burn pits, political boycotts of Israel, and the financial cost of war post-9/11.
The newly enacted FY2020 national defense authorization act alone includes hundreds of new, renewed, or modified reporting requirements, according to an unofficial tabulation.
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.