Friday, August 27, 2004
Government is Getting More Secretive
OpenTheGovernment.org, a coalition of more than 30 organizations promoting less secrecy and more democracy in government, has just released a study on government openness. What they've found is that our government is classiflying more information than ever before and that this is costing us dearly.
(the following quote is taken from a press release issued by OpenTheGovernment.org)
"Government data confirm what many have suspected: secrecy has increased dramatically in recent years under policies of the current administration. For every $1 the federal government spent last year releasing old secrets, it spent an extraordinary $120 maintaining the secrets already on the books, according to an analysis by OpenTheGovernment.org.
'Excessive government secrecy hides problems that the public needs to know, and information embarrassing to officials,' said Rick Blum of OMB Watch, the report's author and coordinator of the coalition. As examples, he cited the extensive classification of documents regarding Abu Ghraib and key sections of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on pre-war intelligence on Iraq."
The study notes that the government spent more creating classified documents last year ($6.5 billion) than in the past decade.
OpenTheGovernment.org also suggests that secrecy is expensive for another reason. Oversight not only allows us to form opinions about good vs. bad leadership, it allows us to identify problems or mistakes that can be fixed. Citing the Justice Department, the study reports that whistleblowers helped the government recover $1.5 billion dollars last year. One wonders how much more could we have saved with more knowledge of what was going on...
(the following quote is taken from a press release issued by OpenTheGovernment.org)
"Government data confirm what many have suspected: secrecy has increased dramatically in recent years under policies of the current administration. For every $1 the federal government spent last year releasing old secrets, it spent an extraordinary $120 maintaining the secrets already on the books, according to an analysis by OpenTheGovernment.org.
'Excessive government secrecy hides problems that the public needs to know, and information embarrassing to officials,' said Rick Blum of OMB Watch, the report's author and coordinator of the coalition. As examples, he cited the extensive classification of documents regarding Abu Ghraib and key sections of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on pre-war intelligence on Iraq."
The study notes that the government spent more creating classified documents last year ($6.5 billion) than in the past decade.
OpenTheGovernment.org also suggests that secrecy is expensive for another reason. Oversight not only allows us to form opinions about good vs. bad leadership, it allows us to identify problems or mistakes that can be fixed. Citing the Justice Department, the study reports that whistleblowers helped the government recover $1.5 billion dollars last year. One wonders how much more could we have saved with more knowledge of what was going on...
# posted by AmandaWelsh @ 11:00 AM 
