Slashdot Mirror
Data Quality Act
The New York Times has a heads-up about a little-noticed add-on to a massive appropriations bill, signed into law by Clinton but taking effect in October. The amendment allows anyone to challenge data published by the Federal government and have it changed or deleted. The main proponents of the law are pro-business groups seeking to tie up environmental and similar regulations by challenging the government's data.
You have accepted the Bush admin spin, oh sorry it was the Clinton whitehouse that did spin, the hero of Air Force One on 9/1 does not spin.
The real difference is that the Kyoto treaty mandates an actual reduction of greenhouse gases of 8% for the biggest polluters - which includes the US which is per capita the biggest polluter of all.
What the Bush admin 'committed' to was to reduce greenhouse emissions per unit of economic output by 7%. Why is this different? Well if we lived in the Victorian age when economic output was output of physical stuff the commitment might mean something. The US economy grew by 3-4% each year under Clinton but the actual manufacturing base was almost unchanged, the economic growth comes in industries that do not produce much in the way of greenhouse gases, mainly IT.
So in fact comparing like for like the EU is cutting emissions by 8% while the Bush admin is allow itself to increase them by 30%. So don't be suprised if the EU say that the US is not doing its share.
It will be interesting to see what the car industry does with this act since the recent increase in US steel tarifs will cost them (and consumers who buy cars) hundreds of millions. The data on which the tarif was justified is pretty flimsy, not all of the US steel industry is having dificulties. The mini-mill manufacturers in the US are as competative as the ones in the EU or anywhere and can sell steel to the auto industry for less than anyone because of shipping costs. The uncompetative steel producers are operating the old integrated plants
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
"After all, those surgeon general warnings are technically government data. . . .and I'm in government service, sorry to say."
.
g /iqg_draft_gu idelines.pdf
I concur in your regret that you're in government service.
First, the Surgeon General's Warning is most certainly NOT government data under the Data Quality law. It is a legally mandated regulatory statement, like the VIN number of your car or the safety warnings on your airbags. There is absolutely no way anyone could challenge those mandates under the Data Quality law, or the OMB Guidelines or Agency Procedures issued in the Federal Register to implement it. To change this a party would need to change Federal laws and regulations, not challenge data.
Everyone is ranting generally about these challenges. The law and the OMB Guidelines and agency procedures will require more than a mere challenge. A request to correct or remove data must be accompanied by a specific explanation of the basis for the challenge and proof that the challenge is legitimate. In other words, a challenger must prove not only that the gov't is wrong, but that s/he is right.
Second, merely stamping a document as "DRAFT" does not automatically exempt it from FOIA. To paraphrase "A whole hell of a lot of court cases have been won and lost" through government folks applying such a simplistic understanding of the FOIA. To be exempt from disclosure, the document generally must be exempt from discovery in litigation - there must be a privilege such as attorney work product, attorney-client privilege or deliberative process privilege. Also, the document must be both "pre-decisional" and "deliberative." This often includes drafts, but not because some functionary simply stamped the document "DRAFT." No wonder no one has faith in the FOIA anymore.
More important, just because a document is exempt doesn't mean it's not "FOIA-able." The FOIA is a *disclosure* law, not a *secrecy* law (i.e. the Privacy Act or the Bank Secrecy Act) - it is intended to encourage disclosure by leaving to the agency's discretion whether to apply the available exemptions. Request whatever you want, the agency is not required to assert an exemption and it is often in the agency's interest to release drafts at some point. LatentIT's agency's practice undermines confidence in the gov't and the FOIA because it is failing to actually consider whether any given document should be disclosed and avoiding the trouble by reflexively stamping it "DRAFT" - that's lazy government at work.
I share many reader's frustration with lawyers and with the government, but being a lawyer and having some small experience with government service, I also know that much of that frustration stems from ill-informed judgments of what lawyers do and how the law works (and is supposed to work). IMHO it is *always* more effective to gripe about the law and the government based on actually reading the law and the procedures rather than react to the media's characterization . .
For the OMB Data Quality Guidelines:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/infore
BTW - the comment period is open through July, make all this back and forth worthwhile - read the proposal and submit some comments "this is exactly what *should* happen."
For good FOIA information:
http://www.usdoj.gov/oip/