Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) this week sued the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) for records relating to OSTP's long-delayed scientific integrity rules.

President Obama's March 9, 2009 memo on scientific integrity directed OSTP to consult with agencies and develop recommendations by July 9, 2009. Fifteen months later, those recommendations are still missing.

In June 2010, OSTP acknowledged that it had convened an interagency panel which developed draft recommendations, which OSTP was still "honing" with the Office of Management and Budget. The draft recommendations have not been released publicly.

PEER's lawsuit targets those draft recommendations, as well as communications between agencies regarding the recommendations and reasons for the delay. According to its complaint, PEER filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the documents on August 11 and has not yet received any of the information nor an estimate of when it would.

"Why is the development of transparency policy cloaked in secrecy?" asked PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch in a statement. "The public should know which agencies oppose a presidential directive to stop politicizing science and why."