Government Transparency and the “Right-to-Know Agenda”
Issues in publicly funded research data and information

Tim Donaghy, Union of Concerned Scientists
Scientific integrity program — political interference in science

Why transparency matters
21st Century Right-to-Know Agenda
Implications for science

• Classification and Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI)
• Use of government databases in research
• Scientific information regulatory context
• Scientists who are federal employees

Censorship and agency communication policies
Making government science available to the public

Censorship of federal scientists:
Federal scientists have been prevented from speaking to the public, replaced in media interviews with other scientists or political appointees, prevented from presenting results at scientific conferences
1,400 scientists told UCS they feared retaliation (out of 3,400 returned survey)
UCS investigation found policies and practices vary widely across federal agencies: some allow employees to speak (as a citizen) on any issue, others have “message control”

Q: To what extent is this a matter of who’s President vs. traditions within agencies? A: Mostly about traditions — NOAA had a strong tradition of freedom to speak, reacted vocally to administration’s attempt to weaken it
Q: Why did NSF get an “incomplete”? A: We couldn’t find their media policy.

Making government science public

Science in the regulatory process

• Confidential Business Information (CBI)
• Regulations.gov
• Ensuring all relevant scientific information is in the docket
• Addressing data gaps

One-stop shopping for government data

• Science.gov
• Innovative ideas for sharing data
• Federal monitoring programs

Q: The government distributes its data at cost sometimes; other times it gives its data to a private party to be re-sold for profit.
A: I’m not sure if our report addresses this. It does talk about making contractor data available.

Q: What about contracting out data collection, bought by the government, with restrictions on re-distribution? Also: De-classification data with scientific value.
A: Recommendations on de-classification, but broad.

Q: What about Google?
A: There is competition on interfaces. That’s the point in making data open.

Q: Does executive privilege extend to departments?
A: I don’t know.

Q: You said “agencies should”. Are you accepting that different agencies will have different approaches, or should there be an assumption that data is sharable and you have to justify exceptions?
A: Guiding principle is presumption of openness. We’ve seen trouble with one-size-fits-all policies for the government. But guidelines could be useful.

Q: On transparency — TransparencyCamp. Unconference model might work for scientific community.

Q: What can this board do to help?
A: We need help — from somebody — on implementation, on how to make data available.

Q: Have you talked to Congress?
A: Yes — we’re putting together our policy recommendations now.

Notes from the first open session, Briefings from Federal Interagency Data and Information Groups.

[missed part of the beginning]

Interagency Working Group on Digital Data

Recommendations:

• working group should become National Science and Technology Council subcmte
• departments and agencies should develop their own policies but make their policies publicly available
• agencies should promote a data management planning process for projects that generate preservation data

Q: What about Obama’s CTO?
A: Chris Greer: This is a good sign for us.

Q: Working with libraries?
A: Greer:

Q: Universities may have counter-sharing cultures, e.g. concerns about tenure.
A: Greer: NSF has some experience here. Proposal should describe impact not just on your area of science, but on society as a whole. Initially we got 15 page proposals with 2 sentences on broader impact. Later, we got better responses. Researchers got serious about it. We could change the culture in a similar way.

Q: What incentives might we use?
A: Greer: We find carrots easier to use than sticks. Ex.: Physical research organizations: Limit access to equipment. Virtual organizations: Your prestige depends on how *many* people are using your equipment. Similar for data. We need ways to track use of data by others, important for promotion, prestige, rewards. Sticks: If you have a management plan, you can review performance under that plan and deny further increments or renewal if they don’t follow through.
Cita Furlani: We don’t have any sticks — it’s all carrots.

Q: Michael Lesk: What needs do you have that this group might help address?
A: Greer: We hoped for a broader look at the role of sectors outside the federal government. One of the most important is the academic sector. What’s the perspective from the university in terms of preserving their faculty’s digital products? What’s their commitment, biz model, what are their needs & expectations from us? Same questions apply to commercial sector: How will we interact with the commercial sector for long-term preservation and access? Ex.: Google Sky built on top of federally-funded telescope. We need to think about how to match needs with business model.

Q: Human consent: Not much standardization in consent agreements. How can we retain datasets from human studies, letting others use them?
A: Greer: There’s significant effort across government in area of EHRs. Point we make in the report: No one size fits all. Different communities of practice, different kinds of data have different kinds of constraints. Many agencies have this as a central issue: HHS, Census. Bottom line: It’s an unsolved problem. But we have expertise and mission-specific interest in these areas.

Q: Have tried to convince wealthier universities to spend more money in this area. But people in the libraries think that someone is supposed to do the work for them before they do anything — originally done by publishers. This is a new idea. Harvard isn’t used to thinking about preserving the output of Harvard. [Is this really true?] What’s the precedent for thinking this way?
A: Greer: Universities have mission for creation & dissemination of knowledge. Role of individual university re: its faculty is up to that university. There are a number of universities conducting experiments in this area: Big 10 repository effort, National Virtual Observatory, California Digital Library, variety of others, Georgia Tech. There’s a lot of space to explore here. Digital preservation doesn’t have to be physically centralized — can be very distributed. This is space worth exploring.
Q: If there were funds made available to individuals or universities — requirement and funding (authority and resources) — to do preservation, then they’d take it more seriously. Universities now think it’d be nice if we could. Nat’l Virtual Observatory: People don’t trust it, think it’s a one thing. Even with Worldwide Telescope, people won’t use it, won’t trust anyone besides the government because they don’t see permanence. If we pair mandate with funding for long-term archiving, then we might get results.
A: Greer: There are people exploring this — there’s not one solution, there’s probably a range of them.

CENDI
Ellen Herbst of the National Technical Information Service, on behalf of CENDI.
CENDI is voluntary inter-agency group of federal STI managers. Member agencies represent 97% of federal R&D budget.

Mission & goals: coordination & leadership, improvement of STI systems, promote understanding.
CENDI shortly will publish list of STI issues for policymakers to consider

Q: Goals, priorities?
A: Herbst: We’re career employees of the federal government — hesitant to advocate on behalf of policy. We come from a broad range of agencies, with our own issues — to rise to the level of CENDI, it has to apply to everybody.
A: Elliot Siegel: Each agency publishes its own report.
Q: Would it be a problem to identify common issues?
A: Elliot Siegel: May not be agreement — agencies may prefer to speak for themselves.
A: Herbst: We also work with non-member agencies across the government.

Q: What would you like this board to do?
A: Herbst: We’ve talked about outreach. December workshop: We got real scientists to speak about what matters to them — a bit novel. One goal is to commit to follow through on common areas of interest, exchanging information.
A: Siegel: We try to point out the value of STI, of collecting & disseminating it. We’d appreciate assistance in articulating this. For instance, we need to articulate the value of libraries — the Internet doesn’t just solve all problems.

Q: Data on value proposition, ROI: Anecdotes are useful.
A: We were going to do a white paper for the new administration, but instead made it a briefing paper. In preparing, we gathered some.
A: Bonnie Carroll: It’s hard to do that — we have vignettes, but it’s hard to quantify.

Q: Paul Uhlir: We did a workshop with OECD on assessment methodologies for economic & social benefits of access to PSI online. We’d like to follow up with a focus on public scientific information. We’ll discuss tomorrow.

U.S. Group on Earth Observations
Greg Withee of U.S. Geological Survey

Discussed GEO, USGEO, and GEOSS
Top international priority of USGEO: Full and open data access

Q: Michael Lesk: Different countries have very different policies re: availability of data. U.S. vs. UK Ordnance Survey vs. Germany weather data. What are the relative merits of these policies?
A: Withee: Wasn’t always like that — in the ’80s and ’90s, Europe moved more into commercial ventures — also France. Many articles on failures of those approaches — they haven’t produced the income to support the ventures, and cut off later value added. [cf. Bayh-Dole?] Data policy for GEO — companion paper might be useful to point these out, but politically it can be challenging.
Q: Paul Uhlir: Paper with OECD compared U.S. and European models, access and re-use, esp. geodata and meteorological data.

Florida’s governor Charlie Crist has espoused support for open government since he took office. His first executive order was to create an Office of Open Government in the Governor’s Office. In June, he created a Commission on Open Government Reform to “review, evaluate, and issue recommendations regarding Florida’s public records and public meetings laws”.

Of particular interest to me is the committee’s charge to investigate the following issues:

3. The collection, storage, retrieval, dissemination, and accessibility of public records through advanced technologies, including internet access.

The Commission is charged with holding at least three public hearings during its term (through the end of 2008). It’s already held two, with a third scheduled for February in Sarasota.

The documents from the first meeting are currently available online, and there are a few that pertain to the Internet:

• A presentation by Jere Moore, suggesting that “all communications within Florida government and especially between government and the public be posted on the Internet daily”
• A statement by Americans for Tax Reform and a companion document summarizing fiscal transparency initiatives, many involving making information available online
• A variety of presentations and publications by Dave Gowan on electronic access to government records and data, as well as copyright and related topics

In the meeting transcript, Mr. Moore’s testimony begins on page 173, and Richard Watson’s (representing Americans for Tax Reform) begins on 189. (Warning: the PDF is 20 mb.)

I hope they’ll check out the cool work from the Sunlight Foundation.