Object Lesson in Non-Transparency At Energy.gov

Harperdog writes "Dawn Stover recounts her attempts to access information at energy.gov, the U.S. Energy Department's 'cutting-edge, interactive information platform,' which apparently isn't any of those things. Especially frustrating were her attempts to locate important documents related to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. An interesting read for anyone interested in true government transparency."

What a surprise

[Attila Dimedici]

What a surprise, the Administration that touts itself as the most transparent in history, isn't. As a matter of fact it is busy obfuscating as much information about the government as possible.

Non-transparency or a bad website?

[slimjim8094]

I read the article, and he's basically got problems with the search feature, the size of PDFs (or the quality of their previews?), and what happens to agency documents when an agency closes (they go to an agency that handles 'legacy' documents)

This is a very accusatory article and summary for the problems he's got. Non-transparency? Obfuscation? Or a work-in-progress? If new work is hidden away, or old work isn't made available in a straightforward and reasonable fashion, then complain... but this guy just comes off as complaining.

Re:Perhaps a less sensitive subject?

[Synerg1y]

But but but, let's back up a minute here. The government trying to purposefully obfuscate sensitive data on a website? Realize they wouldn't publish truly sensitive data here... also, when has the government ever made a user friendly, easy to navigate website? There are projects out there that scrape government websites into better websites to present data. It's more a testament to our IT fail than deliberate vagueness.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Do not attribute to malice...

[decsnake]

that which can be attributed to the government procurement process. IME, all federal govt web sites suck, esp. those used for internal purposes, for which conspiracy theories just don't even make any sense. What they do all have in common is that they are developed by contractors, under the competitive procurement process. Just ask anyone that has had to use fedtraveler.com.

Energy.gov shouldn't have a built-in search engine

[dwheeler]

The Energy department should not have wasted a dime of public money on a specialized search engine built into their website. Yet it looks like they did just that. Government agencies should focus on getting the documents posted in standard formats (e.g., PDF) and then let commercial engines do all the work. You get bonus points if you mark the documents with key metadata (title, authors, abstract, date), but even without that, most commercial search engines can find lots. I'm not the first to note that, several articles have noted this.

If an agency just HAVE to have a search engine on the page, they can just reuse a commercial one. For example, if you want to reuse Google, just follow the instructions here: http://www.google.com/sitesearch/ [google.com] which just inserts a few lines of HTML. From then on, all done. You can see an example on my website front page at www.dwheeler.com [dwheeler.com]. I don't actually do the searching... I just redirect to Google. And users don't have to use Google, they can use any search engine they find convenient.