For each regulatory decision, or rulemaking, an agency keeps a formal docket that contains a wealth of useful information, including scientific studies, cost-benefit analysis, and comments submitted by the public. Unfortunately, if you want access to these materials, you may have to visit a federal docket room in Washington, D.C., as most agencies do not provide this information through their web sites. In this digital age, we still have a substantially paper government.

President Bush, yesterday (6/18), submitted to Congress his proposal for the creation of a new Homeland Security Department. The detailed 35-page bill would transfer about 100 federal entities into a single cabinet agency with an annual budget of more than $ 37 billion and about 170,000 employees -- reportedly the biggest government reshuffling since 1947. Yet buried within this bill (in Section 204) is a single sentence that could create the largest single loophole in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), our safety net for right-to-know:

Citizens for Sensible Safeguards, a coalition of environmental, health, and safety organizations chaired by OMB Watch, sent a standard comment letter to over 50 federal agencies in response to requests for comment on agencies' data quality guidelines. For more on OMB Watch's work on the data quality guidelines click here.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced the launching of a new web service, called EPA Dockets, to allow the public to search regulatory documents and submit comments on rulemakings electronically.