06-25-09 | FDA Looks to Open Up the Medicine Cabinet

The Food and Drug Administration Transparency Task Force held the first of its two public meetings for public recommendations on how to increase transparency in decision making yesterday. At the meeting, Kristi Zonno, Director of Genetics and Health Policy at the advocacy group Genetic Alliance called for FDA to create a public registry of “genetic, [...]

06-09-09 | EPA Will Accelerate Review of Environmental Contaminants and Increase Transparency of Scientific Information

The Integrated Risk Information System is an Environmental Protection Agency database of information on the human health effects of exposure to environmental contaminants. Before getting cataloged in the system, a contaminant must go through the IRIS process, a set of steps to evaluate the substance that include EPA review, interagency science consultation, and external peer [...]

05-27-09 | No Monopoly on Expertise

Last week, the Obama administration unveiled its Open Government Initiative, a set of online tools and a process of public engagement for making its operations more transparent. This podcast takes a look at what it means for citizens and scientists, who are now asked to share their knowledge and ideas.

03-02-09 | Dispatch from Transparency Camp: The Tech-Savvy Push for Open Government Can’t Lose Sight of Public Policy Goals

The government transparency movement is waiting for a deluge of public data from Congress and the Obama administration. Developers are ready with open-source software and protocols for structuring data on everything from lobbying disclosures to pending legislation to stimulus allocations. And once the data is free and flowing through RSS feeds, Application Programming Interfaces, and [...]