Last fall, the U.S. Department of the Interior issued a report on the state of health care in the Pacific Islands, including Guam, American Samoa and the Federated States of Micronesia. Interior manages federal lands, national parks and natural resources, just to name a few, but it also has a responsibility to those in the Pacific Islands, many of whom are U.S. citizens. The report drew some compelling conclusions. Because of the islands’ lack of specialized physicians, many patients were dying during flights on their way to larger hospitals in Hawaii. Equipment shortages had nurses squeezing two infants in incubators and morgue employees embalming bodies on metal gurneys without drainage. In the end, however, the report was filed in a database on the website and received little attention. That's what we need to change.
The office that issued this report at Interior is one of many “offices of inspector general” in the federal government. They are essentially the watchdogs for their agencies, investigating fraud and evaluating programs. Their responsibility is to the American people, especially now with the enormous stimulus package trickling through their agencies. In many ways, they are like journalists, reporting on the transgressions occurring within their departments, but like many government agencies, they tend to focus mostly on their paper products.
It’s time that government agencies, particularly the watchdogs, give their websites a face lift, and we can help them by starting with Interior. They reported on the deaths caused by abandoned mines, the Jack Abramoff case that rocked DC lobbying and a sex scandal in the oil and gas industry. For our class project, we could create a plan to revamp their website to be more like a news site, with photo galleries, video and up-to-the-minute news. We could examine how the site should be designed and what type of information should be presented. We could look at the overall vision for the project, balancing the duty to inform the public with the protection of sensitive information such as privacy data. We could also look at the costs involved, the timetable for completion and what skills we would need to accomplish our goals.
The Obama Administration has called for transparency and accountability in government, and with our project, Interior could lead the way.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This would be a really interesting project to tackle. I think it'd be a challenge, but I think we could come up with some really creative ways to update the site and make information more accessible.
ReplyDeleteWow! I LIKE this idea. I know our objective for the class project is NOT to implement what we come up with but to just design it. But I wonder - do you think the agency would be open to a facelift? Great idea. Start with one "Office of Inspector General" and let the wildfire spread!
ReplyDeleteAnd then those sites could somehow be linked together as a resource for journalists OUTSIDE of government to search for story ideas.
I like this a lot.
I agree that this could be a great tool for journalists to find stories! They could be one of the main audiences to keep in mind.
ReplyDeleteI bet you'd have to fight bureaucratic interests tooth and nail to get this thing -- a great idea and public service -- off the ground. Federal agencies hate controversy, and I can't imagine one wanting to call attention to problems at it or another member of the "federal family."
ReplyDeleteI think this would be an interesting project to tackle - though govt agencies seem to be pretty averse to any kind of change. I definitely agree that this would be a great resource for journalists and it coincides with the govt's priority for more transparency.
ReplyDeleteThis will be very interesting and challenging project to tackle. I think it will pull in a lot of the principles, terminologies and sequence of steps that's prescribed in our textbook. It will make us think through using of rejecting some of that material to serve the particular needs of this project, which is good. And the project may in fact have a real life afterwards. Great idea!
ReplyDelete1. What is the policy of Department of Interior on confidentiality and public disclosure?
ReplyDelete2. A major impediment is funding. Confidentiality=no funding
3. An opportunity is to build an independent wesbite that pulls together video, blogs and printed material of news that DOI would have wanted to otherwise put on their website.
(DOI is one of the hardest departments to crack to have transparency so forgive us for not coming up with the most inspiring opportunities for this)
--Ja'Mein, Fernando, Maitetxu
1. It's not an Interior policy but an agency-wide mandate per the Privacy Act. Government agencies must protect certain personal information maintained in their records. That would include information on government websites.
ReplyDeleteAll offices of inspector general release reports via the Freedom of Information Act. Some offices are more proactive than others in releasing information. If an office has congressional requests and knows news agencies are interested, sometimes it will upload the report to its website. But the FOIA office always "redacts" information out, or takes out personal information. Some offices add the black boxes and others rewrite the information to be more general so it's an easier read.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is I think this project can be done, even while abiding by the Privacy Act.
2. As for funding, this would definitely limit what we can do. Since we'd be using taxpayer money (which is where the OIG budget money comes from), we couldn't go "all out." We'd have to think about what would be most useful to the public without creating a huge expense. We'd have to consider the personnel already employed at the office and their skills and what website contractors might offer.
I think this project has the potential to change the way offices of inspector general and other law enforcement agencies do business.
3. I don't think we need to create another news site to report on Interior. There are already a lot of nonprofits and news agencies that are dedicated to this. I want this project to be an example of how government agencies should be informing the public. Who knows? Maybe this could push other offices to move in this direction.