The coming lame-duck session is the last opportunity for Congress to enact a bipartisan bill that would make modest improvements in the Freedom of Information Act. Will transparency trump gridlock when Congress returns after the November 4, 2014, midterm elections? That remains to be seen.
Three major journalism groups held a joint convention in Chicago September 15-17, 2014, which included a panel discussion on Obama administration secrecy. News industry leaders used the occasion to point out that the Obama administration's deeds and practices did not match its claims of transparency.
"In a sweeping effort to reduce its environmental impact, New York City is planning to overhaul the energy-efficiency standards of all its public buildings and to pressure private landlords to make similar improvements."
An environmental group is suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for denying a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for information on the impacts of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline on whooping cranes, piping plovers and other endangered species. Photo: Piping plover/USFWS.
"Certain members of the Department of Energy's panel reviewing its national laboratories are paid consultants to some of the same labs that they are charged with overseeing."
More evidence of Congress' ineffectiveness comes in its ongoing failure to keep its secrets actually secret. Its official policy is to keep the Congressional Research Service from publicly releasing the handy explainers it produces at taxpayer expense. Thanks again to the Federation of American Scientists' Government Secrecy Project for unauthorized publication of these reports.
The federal government offers a launch pad for a range of journalistic projects, giving you one-click shopping for online state data portals where they exist. These portals bring together links to data from multiple agencies in a single state. Now, the nonprofit Center for Data Innovation has catalogued and rated state open-data policies.
In an August 15 email, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Chief of Staff Gwendolyn Keyes Fleming said EPA Science Advisor Bob Kavlock would review complaints from journalism (including SEJ) and open-government groups that scientists on EPA advisory panels were being told not to answer news-media or congressional inquiries without permission.
"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was hacked three times in the last three years, according to a new report, and two of the attacks were tied to a foreign government."
"CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The state Department of Health and Human Resources lacks a program and properly trained staff to assess community-wide chemical exposures like those that followed the Elk River chemical leak in January, federal public health officials said in a new review made public Tuesday."
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