5.3: Accountability

[Promote] accountability through science and research.

Other Information:

Funding Research. Central to its role as a leader in the criminal justice area is the Department’s commitment to science and to evidence‐based approaches to criminal justice and public safety. Openness and transparency are critical components of accountability, and accountability is best achieved when policy in the criminal justice area is evaluated based on science and research. The Department has demonstrated its commitment in a number of ways, researching, for example, whether certain initial treatment strategies for sexual assault victims are more likely to lead to guilty pleas and convictions, looking at how the passage of time affects criminal recidivism, and studying the cost‐effectiveness of using DNA tests to identify possible suspects in crimes for which it has not been previously heavily used. In addition, the President’s FY 2011 budget request seeks significant additional funding for research efforts like these. Research Information. The Department publishes numerous reports on scores of law‐enforcement related issues every year. Those reports are of high quality and often draw important conclusions from their data. It is important to recognize, however, that other researchers may use the same data to draw insightful conclusions that improve law enforcement or otherwise benefit the public. In order to facilitate such efforts, when an office or division of the Department publishes a report that summarizes quantitative data that the office or division has collected, there shall be a presumption that the office or division will also make the underlying data available through an appropriate channel. The appropriate channel may vary depending on the nature of the data being released. For information that will be of value to the general public, the appropriate channel may be Data.gov. For information that is primarily of value to researchers in a particular field, release to a research institution that serves that field may be more appropriate. The presumption that underlying data should be released can be overcome when an evaluation of the totality of the circumstances weighs against release. This evaluation should be comprehensive, taking into account such factors as the public interest in that data or in similar data previously released, the quality of the data, the burden of necessary processing for release or other reasons. Components should take care to ensure that releases of data are made only after the component takes appropriate precautions to ensure that the release will not compromise legitimate privacy, law enforcement or national security interests. Data sets that cannot be released in full should be considered for partial releases. Releasing data in a usable, accessible format requires resources. In order to optimize the use of scarce public resources, it will be important for components to monitor the public use of the data they have released. They may do so through a variety of means, including by considering the number of times that a data set has been accessed, uses of the data set, and feedback received from relevant stakeholders. Components should use the information they gather through this process as they consider future releases of information. Finally, because it is easy to fall back into the easy pattern of awaiting the next FOIA request, it is important to provide accountability. When an office or division determines that it will not release the underlying data associated with a particular report that has been published, the head of that office should prepare a memorandum of explanation for the Chief FOIA Officer explaining the decision. The memorandum should describe possible partial releases of the data that were considered. Additional information regarding other aspects of the Department’s Open Government response can be found at http://www.justice.gov/open/, by linking to various subjects, including the Department’s declassification programs, records management policies and how the Department responds to requests from Members of Congress. Additional information can also be found at that link on the transparency of information in programs including data.gov, Recovery.gov and USASpending.gov.

Stakeholder(s):

• Chief FOIA Officer

Indicator(s):

Indicator:1

Content