Member since 2 years ago
13 ideas posted
0 comments 37 votes
37 votes
I disagreeAs a beginning commitment toward openness and transparency - blanket declassify (without review) all federal documents created prior to 1941 ...more »
As a beginning commitment toward openness and transparency - blanket declassify (without review) all federal documents created prior to 1941 in all subject matters.
Nuclear and other sensitive subjects due not exist prior to 1941.
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25 votes
I disagreeThe federal government has made an immense investment in software that is never seen or used by the public that has huge potential for public ...more »
The federal government has made an immense investment in software that is never seen or used by the public that has huge potential for public use.
The Pacific Northwest National Labs developed a piece of software (formerly called SPIRE, Starline, and other names) that is used primarily for intelligence work.
This software is knowledge software. It analyzes documents for content and determines similarity (via covariant matrices) and displays this in graphical format - making it vastly easier to find relevant documents/pages and grouping relevant documents.
The government should use this and other government developed software to help the public find the important information they seek in the mountain of federal information.
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8 votes
I disagreeFormer employees of agencies and their contractors should be barred from participation in FACA committees overseeing the agencies work.
17 votes
I disagreeOur laws are too long, too complex and too unreadable. The grand total of all federal laws should be limited such that a single human being ...more »
Our laws are too long, too complex and too unreadable.
The grand total of all federal laws should be limited such that a single human being can read the entire body of federal law in five years spending no more than fours a day at 300 words per minute. Otherwise, ignorance of the law should be an excuse. No one can read it all.
That would put a cap on all laws at 100,000,000 words. And that in itself is a lot.
For any new law proposed, the government should simplify or eliminate old laws to stay under the limit.
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34 votes
I disagreeNo government agency should be allowed to regulate itself. The Department of Energy is currently self regulating. They made immense messes ...more »
No government agency should be allowed to regulate itself.
The Department of Energy is currently self regulating. They made immense messes everywhere they went. Now that it is time to clean up, they make the rules and get the first whack at it. EPA, the states, OSHA, etc.. are all left to second or third fiddle and are essentially neutered. DOE in particular should not be the primary land manager over natural resources and the environment on sites they have messed up.
Let EPA or others lead.
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9 votes
I disagreeAll federal agencies should be directed by executive order to substantively respond to all comments made on documents. The public took the time ...more »
All federal agencies should be directed by executive order to substantively respond to all comments made on documents. The public took the time and care to comment. The government should take the time and care to reply. There should never again be a reply that reads anything like "comment noted".
When substantive allegations of fact are made, the government agency staff should reply substantively detailing why the public should be assured that the government understands the problem at hand, and how the government is able to be sure that the commentors comment is not correct.
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26 votes
I disagreeAll published federal documents should be posted to repositories in their original formats AND pdf formats at resolution levels that are legible ...more »
All published federal documents should be posted to repositories in their original formats AND pdf formats at resolution levels that are legible to everyone.
To often documents are printed, then scanned, then posted and in the process critical information in tables and graphs becomes unreadable.
Also, tabular data becomes almost impossible to access once placed in pdf format. The original spreadsheet format and text formats should be available.
Additionally, the government should standardize on open source free formats and require these for all reports written for or by the government (e.g. the Open Source Open Office formats).
Any provider (free or commerical) can and should use these open formats.
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41 votes
I disagreeCurrently the federal government ignores public access and review in applying record retention laws. So, for example - if a document is classified ...more »
Currently the federal government ignores public access and review in applying record retention laws. So, for example - if a document is classified secret and has a 30 year retention period, but is never declassified during those 30 years, it is destroyed having never seen the light of day.
Change this. All record retention periods should apply ONLY to documents that have been fully declassified and released for public review.
More than that, having been classified and out of sight, the public is unaware of the mere existence of the documents released or their importance. So, for any document covered by any classification (save for privacy act), the public retention period should be not less than 50 years beyond the date they are first made readily available to the public. This should include all administrative classifications except privacy act, including Official Use Only (OUO).
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19 votes
I disagreeFor ALL Environmental Impact Statements (EISs), Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Studies (RI/FSs) and similar documents open for public review ...more »
For ALL Environmental Impact Statements (EISs), Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Studies (RI/FSs) and similar documents open for public review and comment, there should be not less that 30 days comment period for each additional 750 pages of document.
So, a 1,000 age document would have a 60 day (minimum) comment period.
This should apply to drafts, finals and all such documents.
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10 votes
I disagreeAll data sets for non-classified satellite operations should be immediately publicly available. NASA is particularly guilty here, along with ...more »
All data sets for non-classified satellite operations should be immediately publicly available. NASA is particularly guilty here, along with the scientists and national labs. They enter into agreements restricting the public access to information until the scientists have vetted the information or had a long time to review it for their own use. This information belongs to us and should be immediately available.
Also, the software needed to put this information in readily usable public form should be immediately and publicly available without charge.
USGS and NOAA are particularly good in these regards.
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27 votes
I disagreeThe federal government should create and maintain a set of central libraries of ALL federal documents released to the public. The Department ...more »
The federal government should create and maintain a set of central libraries of ALL federal documents released to the public. The Department of Energy through OSTI has made a good beginning at doing this with the Energy Citations Database.
That database, good as it is, is incomplete and most newer documents take a long time to be posted. ALL new documents should be posted immediately.
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26 votes
I disagreeAll too often the government produces immense detailed documents such as Environmental Impact Statements, Remedial Investigation/Feasibility ...more »
All too often the government produces immense detailed documents such as Environmental Impact Statements, Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Studies (etc...) and bases these on a long list of government/contractor documents that contain the actually supporting data. The devil hides in those details.
For ANY federal document or report released to the public- ALL of the referenced documents must be made readily and reasonably available (at least in electronic format) to all comers over the internet (as well as for physical inspection at some locations) prior to the document being released.
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13 votes
I disagreeALL federal documents, whether written by the government or by contractors working for the government should be born unclassified (with rare ...more »
ALL federal documents, whether written by the government or by contractors working for the government should be born unclassified (with rare and specific exceptions - e.g. nuclear weapons design).
By executive order - eliminate ALL administrative classifications not called out by law. If a document is classified or restricted or contains such information it should be appropriately classified and controlled. Official Use Only (OUO) is an administrative classification used by the government to avoid releasing documents despite lacking any real classification. Eliminate OUO entirely.
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