Congress passed the Information Quality Act to require government agencies to tell the truth, and to respond and correct their facts when citizens point out falsehoods.
But agencies get stuck in their lies and decline to follow this law. In particular, there's a current court case against HHS regarding whether marijuana has any legitimate use in medicine. The agency has argued to the court that despite the Act, they have no obligation to revise facts that they publish, and that citizens have no standing to take an agency to court to make it correct its lies. The District Court bought this argument; the case is now in the 9th Circuit.
See: http://www.safeaccessnow.org/section.php?id=160
And: http://www.safeaccessnow.org/downloads/HHS%20Brief%20for%20Appellees%20.pdf
The Obama administration should by Executive Order require agencies to correct their falsehoods, and to submit to the jurisdiction of the courts and the standing of requesters in doing so. And if the courts determine that the IQA does not provide sufficient jurisdiction for a lawsuit, it should be revised by Congress to have enough teeth that lying agencies can be brought, kicking and screaming, to the truth.
Comments (3)
It would be a good idea to require by law, that any agency that violates the IQA by providing false or fraudulent information, transmit an electronic record of their retraction to the Library of Congress, or some government (maybe just data.gov) or private organization, that can appropriately file and publish it.
This way, we will have a running tally of which agencies produce the most false and retracted statements. It'd be great for exposing incompetence or deception in govt, and embarrassing those agencies into cleaning up their act. At the very least, it will inform citizens, journalists and academics about how seriously they should take the word of certain agencies... Hopefully, it will highlight for the Executive, which agencies need to be reviewed and/or re-staffed.
This is fundamental. Truth is the core foundation for integrity. We have a government that lies to us.
I think this is a fine idea in theory but may be a lousy idea in practice. Industry pushed this bill in order to remove information from OSHA & EPA sites that they disagreed with. Any withdrawal requirement should not be the subject of litigation. Agencies are very short-staffed as it is and the more contested an agency's jurisdiction the more short-staffed it tends to be.