II: Transparency
Allow the public and all stakeholders to know what we are doing, and more importantly, how and why we are doing it Other Information:
Transparency is the foundation of open government. Transparency allows the public and all stakeholders to know what you are
doing, and more importantly, how and why you are doing it. EPA’s commitment to transparency is not new. In 1983, Administrator
Ruckelshaus promised that EPA would operate ― in a fishbowl‖ and ― attempt to communicate with everyone from environmentalists
to those we regulate…as openly as possible.‖ Upon being sworn in last year, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson pledged in her
first memorandum to EPA employees to ― uphold the values of scientific integrity, rule of law and transparency every day.
What is new is our commitment to reach out to more stakeholders, especially those historically underrepresented in EPA decision
making. Since the Open Government Directive was issued in December of 2009, we have taken a number of actions to promote transparency,
as detailed in this section. Of particular note, we are developing a plan to streamline and simplify how the public asks for,
tracks and receives information subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and we have posted more than 400 data sets
on Data.gov. Empowering our stakeholders with more information is not helpful if the data are not current or of high quality.
We address this challenge in two ways. First, EPA established a governance structure, described in Section I.D.2 above, to
ensure progress in open government initiatives and find ways to further open EPA’s culture. Second, we are developing a clear
process for data posted on Data.gov and EPA.gov to balance the need for relevant and current information with our commitment
to meet or exceed EPA’s established standards for high quality data. The availability of high quality data has led to innovative
EPA mechanisms to give individuals the ability to discover important information about the state of their local environment.
For example, did you know that you can discover what is happening in your community related to your air and water quality,
and cancer and mortality rates by visiting EPA’s My Environment Web site (www.epa.gov/myenvironment)? The remainder of this
section provides information about: * Transparency history and baseline. * Increasing and improving EPA information on Data.gov.
* Governmentwide initiatives and requirements. * Transparency Innovations.
Objective(s):
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