Object Lesson in Non-Transparency At Energy.gov 111
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."
Perhaps a less sensitive subject? (Score:5, Interesting)
One wonders if accessing information about Coal or Natural gas production would be easier than information about Nuclear waste storage.
It might be she stepped into a Homeland Security issue, and managed to get herself on a watch list. All these documents were supposedly transferred in 2010. That would put it squarely in the Obama administration's Open Government time frame, but it was also during the height of the irrational security theater phase of locking up information about everything from Atomic weapons to Water supplies.
Google would have been more fruitful, as the article states.
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Re:Perhaps a less sensitive subject? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps a less sensitive subject? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Perhaps a less sensitive subject? (Score:5, Interesting)
Government-run healthcare is not awesome, but it is arguably necessary.
However, that's a moot point because that's not what the US is going to get. The US had a right-wing party yelling "socialists! Death panels!" at a less-right-wing party which put up self-imposed roadblocks to appease them, even though the latter controlled Congress, Senate and White House (until late 2010), until you got mandatory health insurance.
It is a giant clusterfuck that Republicans are secretly overjoyed to get, because when it collapses they will tout it as an example of why public health systems don't work, even though it's nothing like the public health or mixed public/private systems in other countries that DO work (though again, not awesomely).
They (and much of the American public) also ignore the fact that even before Obamacare, even during the Bush Jr. era, the US was already spending more tax dollars on healthcare per capita than all the other industrialized nations. If they'd only spend those *existing* health care tax dollars properly, the standard of care that the poor and lower-middle class would be AT LEAST as good as Canada's (which has plenty of flaws, don't get me wrong, but it's very unlikely to force people into bankruptcy or taking out a second mortgage), and the wealthier could still pay for better health services.
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Good on your boy. My dad did this, moving out of Chicago to a small farming town in downstate Illinois. He took care of about a third of the county and often brought home vegetables and meat that people had given him in lieu of payment. That being said, he was still able to pull down enough money (mostly through Medicare and Medicade payments) to put his kids through school and finance the farm he always wanted. Your son probably won't miss a lot of meals (unless he's working too much), but he might not hav
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on the one hand, they can complain about DMV, Post Office, Social Security Services, etc and etc, and then turn around and say "Government Run Health Care is going to be AWESOME Woot!"
Boggles the mind.
By that the logic, the govt shouldn't be responsible for anything. The govt may be shithouse at certain things, but as far as distributing healthcare to everyone equally, is still the best model available.
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"distributing healthcare to everyone equally"
Impossible. Pure and simple. It is a limited resource and therefore cannot be given to everyone equally. Nothing like overly simplistic thinking.
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"distributing healthcare to everyone equally"
Impossible. Pure and simple. It is a limited resource and therefore cannot be given to everyone equally. Nothing like overly simplistic thinking.
Nothing like piss poor comprehension you mean. I didn't claim it was a perfect model, just the best on offer.
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You said "equally" which is impossible. Typical Socialist over simplistic viewpoint, and fraught with tons of unintended consequences as the system TRIES to accomplish the impossible. It is typical because it is "equal results" oriented thinking, which is invariably impossible in all cases, especially cases with limited resources.
It isn't even the "best on offer" because you're not being reasonable in even looking at alternatives. In fact, Universal Health Care almost always results in worse care for more p
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This is nothing but FUD. Yucca Mountain has got next to nothing to do with nuclear weapons and you aren't going to get on a 'watch list' by asking about it. It's been studied and discussed and studied all over again dating back to 1978. The proposed storage facility is for spent fuel from nuclear reactors. You can't use this stuff to make nuclear weapons. That doesn't mean you want to hand it out at parties, but it's a basic radioactive storage problem first, and a security problem no more so than storing a
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Appearance Is Everything (Score:5, Informative)
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This is called Mandated Processes, not Mandated Results. If they had to cost justify their existence, most agencies couldn't even come close.
Not to be a grammar nazi or anything but... (Score:2, Flamebait)
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not to be a web nazi or anything,(you missed this comma btw) but learn to properly link your links...
1. http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/abject+lesson.html [usingenglish.com]
2. Web grammar 101 here [usingenglish.com]
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"(In some varieties of English 'object lesson' is used.)"
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From the site you linked to:
(In some varieties of English 'object lesson' is used.)
This idiom is Indian English
So given that it was an article about US government, it's fair to assume that the writer was trying to use American English idioms, rather than Indian English ones.
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Funny, as a moderator I do pretty much exactly the opposite of everything you said moderators do, with one exception:
I do NOT, generally, like to engage in "moderation fights" where I mod down what someone has modded up, or vice versa, except in really egregious cases of mis-moderation.
I rarely mod down.
I like to mod posts that haven't been modded already, to lift up interesting/deserving posts so that they can be seen.
I'm not a stickler on modding down off-topic posts, but I will in really egregious cases.
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Holy shit! Been a long time since this was first posted [slashdot.org] and managed to receive several hundred mods. Followed up by a temper tantrum from the slashdot management team banning anyone who moderated it from ever moderating again.
What a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
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It just shows how much of a bald-faced liar Obama is.
It's pretty sad: the Republicans are far more deserving of respect than he is. At least the Republicans are honest about their intentions and plans to make the rich richer, prop up badly-managed corporations, and screw everyone else. They come right out and say it to our faces, and try to convince us it's for the better, and that rich people are better than the rest of us, and half the public actually believes them. Obama and the Democrats, OTOH, are bi
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I love how the Democrat morons get mod points and mod me down for speaking the truth about their corporatist, warmongering Messiah.
Non-transparency or a bad website? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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>but this guy just comes off as complaining
Should he give praise for the effort even when the result is non-satisfactory?
Re:Non-transparency or a bad website? (Score:5, Informative)
The article goes into a fair amount of detail regarding information that used to be available prior to the new-and-improved-and-consolidated website energy.gov. Based on the contents of the article, I personally would conclude that the author's complaints are valid.
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I wasn't concerned with the author's name. I will admit I skimmed some of the non-relevant portions, since I was short on time, but I believe I got the substance of the post.
As for the old website, sites tend to grow organically. The content on the old website was put there one-at-a-time, as it came to exist. The new website would've required a bulk import, and those are pretty slow. I'd rather they have the new site up earlier than delaying until everything is copied over. Should it have been done better?
Re:Non-transparency or a bad website? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ever heard the phrase "one catches more flies with honey that with vinager". Instead of accusing the site of being "not transparent" maybe she could have stated that search engin needs fixing and suggesting exactly how to do it.
Another issue is that she is looking for a ten-year old document from an Office that was closed and all documents transferred to Legacy Management. If the documents were transferred in electronic form, as they should be, it is up to LM to put them up in searchable format. The OP's issue should be with LM and not Energy.gov.
By the way, just because one can not instantly download any document created in the last ten years does not mean the government is not transparent. It just means that they have not dealt with the millions of legacy documents.
Also missing (Score:2, Interesting)
Wow, there's a lot of trolls today.
Back on topic:
I couldn't find anything at Energy.gov [energy.gov] that indicates what portion of my tax burden is due to supporting non-competitive forms of "green" energy.
I don't care where you come down on these issues, but anyone who views this site has to agree, that it is pure marketing. I run my monitor at 1920x1080, and I had to press 'PageDn' three times to get to the content!
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I don't care where you come down on these issues, but anyone who views this site has to agree, that it is pure marketing. I run my monitor at 1920x1080, and I had to press 'PageDn' three times to get to the content!
I read that, and thought, 'Oh, c'mon, it can't be that bad.'
Then I actually went to energy.gov... Sweet zombie Jesus...
I find the American Idol-esque "Who will be AMERICA'S NEXT TOP ENERGY INNOVATOR" banner ad at the top particularly disgusting.
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Wow, you guys aren't kidding. That's one of the worst websites I've seen in a while.
Propaganda != transparency. (Score:1)
Yucca Mountain is needed (Score:3, Informative)
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We don't need to poison our air and water to have a succesful society, and nucular is BAD. All we need is to go back to nature, get rid of all this awful progress and live simply. If I need energy I will just hitch a few unicorns to a plow! Simplify man!
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What to do with it? Leave it exactly where it is. Let the people who benefited from the production of the waste be the ones who deal with the waste. Seems totally fair to me.
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Missed the unicorn part, huh?
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If I need energy I will just hitch a few unicorns to a plow!
But what do we do with existing nuclear waste?
Well, what do you think those unicorns are going to eat, huh?
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potential muck-raking reporter
Yeah, the bitch soun
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I hardly blame them for not releasing information on Yucca Mountain to a potential muck-raking reporter. I know everyone hates the idea of Yucca Mountain, but do they realize the alternatives? Nuclear waste is currently being stored on-site all over the country and piling up...
TFTFY. You did actually mean to include the other alternative, right? You know, the one where we hold-off on creating more nuclear wast until we can figure out what to do with shit that stays toxic for tens of thousands of years. Because just burying it in the ground is stupendously short-sighted approach. Right?
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and I am not aware of any better alternative than Yucca Mountain.
I'm aware of one: "getting rid of that retarded law that prevents us from using it as fuel."
Cutting-edge (adj.): (Score:1)
In politics, the infinitely thin blade of knowledge that is left after everything else is cut.
Seriously, this should not come as any great surprise. Politicians have a vested interested in not publishing anything that could be embarrassing. Civil servants have a vested interest in not publishing anything that might threaten their careers. On top of that, there is a tradition of security through obscurity and we live in a time when the appearance of security is considered of paramount importance, trumping al
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Perhaps the person who modded my post a troll would like to explain how stupidity and ignorance make for sound judgement or competent oversight. You can't? Oh, what a surprise THAT is. By modding it so, you have only demonstrated WHY stupidity and ignorance are unacceptable. Since the cure is never less oversight, the only cure is better education and more of it.
In the case of Slashdot, you can see that clearly. Back when the majority were intelligent, moderation was also intelligent. Now that it is a haven
And how does this surprise us? (Score:1)
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The most technologically-advanced Presidency ever? (Score:1)
But, but, but... How can these problems keep popping up? Don't we have the first-ever Blackberry-using President?.. Was not Obama praised as "technologically-savvy" on this very forum in 2008?
Usability (Score:2)
I didn't find the sites mentioned in the article any harder to navigate than the average commercial site. Author was incorrect about not being able to access documents online at the Office of Legacy Management site. I suggest she show a little more patience and perseverance if her object is to find information. If she just wanted to flame Obama's promises of transparency, any topic or government site would do.
Do not attribute to malice... (Score:4, Insightful)
Handy Link yields an additional 86 results. (Score:4, Informative)
Considering that these are generally PDFs containing large quantities of information (not endless blog re-posts like you'd get with Google hits), it's pretty hard to believe that there's a deliberate attempt to obscure information.
Is their search system as intuitive and comprehensive as Google? No. Then again, nobody's is- if it was easy, everybody would be doing it, and Google wouldn't be Google.
Energy.gov shouldn't have a built-in search engine (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Quote the regulation, please (Score:2)
I disagree regarding reusing search engines. A government agency can simply allow all search engines to scan their public files, and then anyone can choose any search engine they want to (and find what they need). There's no law that the government has to FORBID access to public data from search engines; that would be a stupid thing to do. In fact, it's usually a bad idea for the government to provide their own search engine. Governments should not pay for a special search engine for publicly-availabl
Typical government operation. (Score:2)
Thoughts from Energy's Digital Director (Score:2)
In fact, after this article flagged concerns about searching the site, we started working to change the search functionality on the homepage of Energy.gov to default to global search. Currently, the search defaults to within the top-level Energy.gov pages and doesn’t include results from all the subsites within the platform unless you indicate as such. For example, wh