Public Data and Websites

Feb 8, 2016

Top 400 Taxpayers See Tax Rates Rise, But There’s More to the Story

As Americans were gathering party supplies to greet the New Year, the Internal Revenue Service released their annual report of cumulative tax data reported on the 400 tax r...

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Feb 4, 2016

Chlorine Bleach Plants Needlessly Endanger 63 Million Americans

Chlorine bleach plants across the U.S. put millions of Americans in danger of a chlorine gas release, a substance so toxic it has been used as a chemical weapon. Greenpeace’s new repo...

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Jan 25, 2016

U.S. Industrial Facilities Reported Fewer Toxic Releases in 2014

The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data for 2014 is now available. The good news: total toxic releases by reporting facilities decreased by nearly six percent from 2013 levels. Howe...

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Jan 22, 2016

Methane Causes Climate Change. Here's How the President Plans to Cut Emissions by 40-45 Percent.

UPDATE (Jan. 22, 2016): Today, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released its proposed rule to reduce methane emissions...

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more news

Public Comments Lost after Regulations.gov Glitch

Sep 1, 2009 by Matthew Madia

A glitch on the federally run Regulations.gov website prevented more than 100 users from successfully submitting comments to several rulemaking agencies, according to Nextgov.com reporter Aliya Sternstein. Unfortunately, even though the service disruption occurred in late July, the problem is far from resolved.

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The Rise of Gov 2.0

At the close of President Obama’s first 200 days in office, the administration has demonstrated a willingness to experiment with new technologies and their potential role in making government more participatory and accountable. New e-government tools have been deployed to keep track of government spending, gather public input on policymaking, and convey the status of government projects. These tools may hold the potential to give Main Street the same voice in government traditionally reserved for K Street.

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EPA Seeks Public Input on Clean Water Plan through Online Forum

Aug 7, 2009 by Brian Turnbaugh*

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking the first step in implementing Administrator Lisa Jackson's call for greater transparency and improved enforcement of EPA's clean water programs. To gather ideas for its nascent Clean Water Enforcement Action Plan, the agency is accepting comments from the public through a new online forum on EPA's blog.

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Bureaucratic Unrest Surrounds New Regulations.gov Site

Jul 31, 2009 by Matthew Madia

In his “In the Loop” column in today’s Washington Post, Al Kamen reports that Department of Transportation officials are unhappy with the new version of Regulations.gov, the federally run website that allows users to comment on proposed regulations. (I blogged about the redesign here.)

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New Version of Regulations.gov Unveiled

Jul 28, 2009 by Matthew Madia

The Obama administration has launched a new version of Regulations.gov – the federally run website that allows users to comment on proposed regulations and find information in rulemaking dockets.

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NIH to Edit Wikipedia – A Slippery Slope?

Jul 28, 2009 by Roger Strother*

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has initiated a program to encourage its scientists to edit and create articles in the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a widely used free resource on the web often criticized for its lack of reliability that results from its open editing format.

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White House Opens Online Dialogue Concerning Cookies

Jul 27, 2009 by Roger Strother*

As a result of the Open Government dialogue the administration has conducted over the past few months, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has opened a new internet based discussion on the administration’s policy regarding the federal government’s use of web-tracking technologies. On previous government blog discussions of different topics the cookie policy was of continuous interest sparking this separate effort.

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Phase Three of Open Government Directive Process Generates Recommendations

The third phase of public participation in generating recommendations for the federal Open Government Directive wrapped up on July 6. The final phase sought draft recommendations within three broad topics – transparency, collaboration, and participation – which President Barack Obama identified in his January memo as the three principles of open government.

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Discussing New Performance Report on Federal News Radio

Jul 7, 2009 by Adam Hughes*

I just finished up an interview about our new report Building a Better Government Performance System on Federal News Radio. The segment was a part of The Daily Debrief with Chris Dorobek and Amy Morris and I got to talk a bit about the unique process we used to develop these recommendations to the Obama administration and some of the implications of those recommendations on current performance measurement systems.

You can listen to the interview on the Federal News Radio Daily Debrief webpage or download the mp3 of the broadcast.

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OMB Watch Comments on E-Rulemaking

Jul 6, 2009 by Matthew Madia

As OMB Watch wrote in the latest issue of our biweekly newsletter The Watcher, the Obama administration is asking the public for ideas on reforming e-rulemaking – government’s system for displaying regulatory information and receiving public comments on proposed rules.

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