Post by Eira Tansey

It is imperative that archivists and our allies who care about climate change educate ourselves as much as possible about the current landscape of federal records, research data, and open government initiatives. There have been a lot of concerns raised about the continuing availability of federal climate change research data, as well as continued access to government webpages. ProjectARCC applauds the work of all of our colleagues who are working to raise awareness to the vulnerability of climate data, particularly the work of our friends at DataRefuge.

This post is part of an ongoing series to educate our professional community on what to prepare for in terms of climate change, environmental regulation, and recordkeeping during the transition to the next presidential administration. The focus of this post will be on agency open government efforts. ProjectARCC also recommends the agency forecasts put together by the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative.

What has been the progress on open-government initiatives to date within these agencies, and what work is left to be done?

Although the Obama administration will be ending with a mixed record on transparency, the Obama administration introduced many very important changes intended to foster open government. Since President Obama took office, a number of directives intended to promote Open Government Initiatives were issued, including the Open Government Directive (M-10-06), the Managing Government Records Directive (M-12-18) and Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research (OSTP Memo of February 22, 2013), and Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information Executive Order 13642.

All of these have implications for general principles of open government, transparency, and access to data (whether it’s governmental data, or scientific data created outside the government, but funded by federal dollars). While a deep exploration of the various open government initiatives is beyond the scope of this blog post, here’s a quick look at highlights of what agencies which have environmental-related work in their mission are doing. Per the Open Government Directive issued in 2010, agencies are required to maintain a webpage documenting their steps to comply with the various open government requirements. A full list can be found here.

Please note all links below were working as of the afternoon of January 18, 2017. However, over the course of working on this post I noticed some URLs had already changed from early drafts. I have nominated many of these URLs to the End of Term archive, but I would urge you to also nominate them as well, and save any local copies of PDFs or webpages you may want to refer to later. I would advise you to save local copies sooner rather than later given that the new administration will be taking office in 2 days.

Environmental Protection Agency https://www.epa.gov/open

The last EPA open government plan was issued in September 2016.

Data highlights:
Open data currently offered by the Environmental Protection Agency can be found at https://edg.epa.gov/metadata/catalog/main/home.page. The report goes into great detail about EPA’s approach to developing an information management policy to be compliant with the Open Government directives, as well as plans to develop a data lifecycle plan in FY17.

Records Management and FOIA highlights:
EPA is currently investigating email archiving tools based on role or content, and is also evaluating open-source or cloud-based” records management systems in anticipation of the 2019 deadline laid out in the Managing Government Records directive (https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2012/m-12-18.pdf). EPA FOIA requests can be tracked online, and the most recent Open Government report includes an objective to reduce backlog requests by 10%. The records management page for the EPA can be found here: https://www.epa.gov/records More information on EPA FOIA is here: https://www.epa.gov/foia

Department of the Interior https://www.doi.gov/open

The last DOI open government plan report was issued in June 2014.

Data highlights:
Open data currently offered by the Department of the Interior can be found at https://data.doi.gov/dataset A major initiative towards transparency within the DOI has been the establishment of the US Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. According to the DOI, EITI is ” voluntary, global effort designed to strengthen accountability and public trust for the revenues paid and received for a country’s oil, gas and mineral resources. Countries that follow the standard publish a report in which governments and companies publicly disclose royalties, rents, bonuses, taxes and other payments from oil, gas, and mining resources.” (https://www.doi.gov/eiti)
The 2016 EITI Exective Summary Report can be found here.

Records Management and FOIA highlights:
According to the 2014 report, many records retention schedules are in the process of consolidation, and migration work had started on several records systems. The records management page for the Department of Interior can be found here: https://www.doi.gov/ocio/policy-mgmt-support/information-and-records-management/records More information on DOI FOIA is here: https://www.doi.gov/foia

Department of Energy http://energy.gov/open-government

The last Department of Energy open government plan was issued in September 2016.

Data highlights:
Open data currently offered by the Department of Energy can be found at https://www.data.gov/energy/. There is also significant data available through the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) at http://www.eia.gov/tools/. One of the more interesting tools on the EIA website is the real-time tracker documenting power demands on the US electrical grid (http://www.eia.gov/beta/realtime_grid/#/summary/demand?end=20161213&start=20161113).

Records Management and FOIA highlights:
According to the 2016 report, the Department of Energy has opted to use the Capstone method for agency email. The records management page for the Department of Energy can be found here: http://energy.gov/cio/office-chief-information-officer/services/guidance/records-management More information on Department of Energy FOIA is here: http://energy.gov/management/office-management/operational-management/freedom-information-act

National Aeronautics and Space Administration https://open.nasa.gov/

The last National Aeronautics and Space Administration open government plan was issued in September 2016.

Data highlights:
Open data currently offered by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) can be found at https://open.nasa.gov/open-data/ (this portal takes you to open data, open code, APIs, and other resources). All research produced with NASA funding is now required to be deposited in the NASA research repository within a year, and is available at PubSpace: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/funder/nasa/

Records Management and FOIA highlights:
The records management page for NASA can be found here: https://www.nasa.gov/content/nasa-records-management More information on NASA FOIA: https://www.nasa.gov/FOIA/index.html NASA maintains a FOIA library of available documents of interest to the public (as determined by frequent requests): http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/FOIA/err.htm You may be interested in reading the NASA Transition Binder: https://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/FOIA/Transition_Binder.pdf

Department of Commerce (which oversees the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency [NOAA])** 

**As far as I could find, there is not a dedicated Open Government office for NOAA, so I reviewed the Open Government initiative documents for the Department of Commerce. This can be found here: http://www.osec.doc.gov/opog/OG/default.htm

The last National Aeronautics and Space Administration open government plan was issued in September 2016. Pages 111-121 concern the activities of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency.

Data highlights:
Open data currently offered by NOAA can be found at https://data.noaa.gov/dataset. Interesting NOAA data highlights include their efforts to assign DOIs to datasets that are in the National Center for Environmental Information. NOAA is also responsible for maintaining climate.gov.

Records Management and FOIA highlights:
The records management page for NOAA can be found here: http://www.corporateservices.noaa.gov/audit/records_management/ More information on NOAA FOIA: http://www.noaa.gov/foia-freedom-of-information-act NOAA maintains a FOIA reading room, including links to frequerntly requested records: http://www.noaa.gov/foia-reading-room