WASHINGTON, May 22, 2009—On Jan. 21, President Barack Obama issued a memo about the Open Government Directive. The memo gave the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) 120 days to develop recommendations for the directive. This effort has taken a slightly different direction that is encouraging collaboration and public engagement.

By Gary D. Bass, OMB Watch
Published May 6, 2009 in the DC Examiner
President Barack Obama’s effort to eliminate the corrupting influence of special interests should be applauded, but it needs some refinement.

WASHINGTON, April 28, 2009—In November 2008, OMB Watch, together with a diverse set of organizations and individuals, presented Barack Obama (who was then President-elect) and Congress with recommendations on how to improve government transparency, advance Americans' right to know, reform the regulatory process, and ensure that federal agencies are working to advance the public interest. The recommendations were included in two separate reports, Moving Toward a 21st Century Right-to-Know Agenda and Advancing the Public Interest through Regulatory Reform. Both reports included actions for President Obama to undertake within the first 100 days of his presidency. OMB Watch has assessed the Obama administration's work on government transparency and regulatory reform at the 100-day mark.

WASHINGTON, March 3, 2009—Hundreds of national, state, and local groups and individual signers today called on EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to reverse a 2006 Environmental Protection Agency rule that limits public access to information about toxic chemical releases. The rule, finalized in December 2006, allows industries to withhold information on the quantities and locations of toxic chemical releases previously reported to the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI).