Object Lesson in Non-Transparency At Energy.gov

Harperdog writes "Dawn Stover recounts her attempts to access information at energy.gov, the U.S. Energy Department's 'cutting-edge, interactive information platform,' which apparently isn't any of those things. Especially frustrating were her attempts to locate important documents related to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. An interesting read for anyone interested in true government transparency."

Comments

Perhaps a less sensitive subject?

[icebike]

One wonders if accessing information about Coal or Natural gas production would be easier than information about Nuclear waste storage.
It might be she stepped into a Homeland Security issue, and managed to get herself on a watch list. All these documents were supposedly transferred in 2010. That would put it squarely in the Obama administration's Open Government time frame, but it was also during the height of the irrational security theater phase of locking up information about everything from Atomic weapons to Water supplies.

Google would have been more fruitful, as the article states.

Re:Perhaps a less sensitive subject?

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I have tired using data.gov to try to get the GIS data for the trails in national parks, I also tried the national parks service without any luck. So it isn't just sensitive info that is impossible to get.

Re:Perhaps a less sensitive subject?

[quacking duck]

Government-run healthcare is not awesome, but it is arguably necessary.

However, that's a moot point because that's not what the US is going to get. The US had a right-wing party yelling "socialists! Death panels!" at a less-right-wing party which put up self-imposed roadblocks to appease them, even though the latter controlled Congress, Senate and White House (until late 2010), until you got mandatory health insurance.

It is a giant clusterfuck that Republicans are secretly overjoyed to get, because when it collapses they will tout it as an example of why public health systems don't work, even though it's nothing like the public health or mixed public/private systems in other countries that DO work (though again, not awesomely).

They (and much of the American public) also ignore the fact that even before Obamacare, even during the Bush Jr. era, the US was already spending more tax dollars on healthcare per capita than all the other industrialized nations. If they'd only spend those *existing* health care tax dollars properly, the standard of care that the poor and lower-middle class would be AT LEAST as good as Canada's (which has plenty of flaws, don't get me wrong, but it's very unlikely to force people into bankruptcy or taking out a second mortgage), and the wealthier could still pay for better health services.

Re:Non-transparency or a bad website?

[jklovanc]

Ever heard the phrase "one catches more flies with honey that with vinager". Instead of accusing the site of being "not transparent" maybe she could have stated that search engin needs fixing and suggesting exactly how to do it.

Another issue is that she is looking for a ten-year old document from an Office that was closed and all documents transferred to Legacy Management. If the documents were transferred in electronic form, as they should be, it is up to LM to put them up in searchable format. The OP's issue should be with LM and not Energy.gov.

By the way, just because one can not instantly download any document created in the last ten years does not mean the government is not transparent. It just means that they have not dealt with the millions of legacy documents.

Re:The Slashdot troll post investigation

[Score Whore]

Holy shit! Been a long time since this was first posted and managed to receive several hundred mods. Followed up by a temper tantrum from the slashdot management team banning anyone who moderated it from ever moderating again.