Parade Magazine, the Sunday supplement that is inserted into newspapers all over the country, turned its attention last week from celebrity romance and dieting tips to the problem of government secrecy.
“Concerns about overclassification cut across ideological and party lines,” according to Parade.
“Besides alienating Americans from their government, the result is that many debates today are little more than rhetoric and smears, because information explaining how a policy was decided isn’t available.”
The Parade article serves as a kind of overture to Sunshine Week, March 13-17, which is an initiative by media organizations and others to focus public attention on the defects of unchecked government secrecy.
See “Are They Taking Away Our Freedoms?” by Lyric Wallwork Winik, Parade, February 26.
Rebuilding public participation starts with something simple — treating the public not as a problem to manage, but as a source of ingenuity government cannot function without.
If the government wants a system of learning and adaptation that improves results in real time, it has to treat translation, utilization, and adaptation as core functions of governance rather than as afterthoughts.
Coordination among federal science agencies is essential to ensure government-wide alignment on R&D investment priorities. However, the federal R&D enterprise suffers from egregious siloization.
Don’t like the Chinese-backed EVs that are undercutting your market? Start with a well-designed statute to strengthen market oversight and competition while also providing American companies with support.