Good News: It was a great year for transparency (video)

I think it's important to remember how far we've come in the past year.  The Sunlight Foundation does a great job at pushing transparency reforms on the national level, and assisting with local groups' efforts.  Here's a neat, short video listing last year's accomplishments.

See Jerry Run. See Jerry Win. See Jerry Govern. See Jerry Hide His Records. See Jerry Run Again.

California is electing a new governor, this year.  Jerry Brown used to be governor of California.  The records of California governors are sealed for 50 years.  Jerry Brown helped pass and uphold that law.  Jerry Brown is running for governor, again, 25 years later.

Now, we can't get access to records of what Jerry Brown did the last time he was governor, without his written permission.

To put this in perspective, U.S. Presidents can seal parts of their records for at most 12 years after they leave office.

If Brown wins the Democratic nomination, I will likely vote for him and campaign for him, unless by some miracle we adopt instant-runoff voting.



See my head explode.

Public records, you say? (delete) What public records?

San José officials have taken a definite step forward by opening up their personal phones and email accounts to scrutiny. But fear not, my lobbyist friends! They left themselves a tiny loophole just big enough to slip a delete button through.


San José's City Council has moved a step toward adopting regulations that require the mayor, the council members, and their staffs to "make messages about public matters that council members send or receive on such personal devices subject to disclosure, just like other official records." This is a real advance for local government, and local public officials elsewhere may be feeling a bit nervous. Personally, I would like to see regulations like this apply to all government officials.

But there's one big loophole that the City Council left for itself:

It does not require them to retain messages sent via a personal e-mail account or device for any length of time.

So, if you're in San José government, and you get an inconvenient text message from a lobbyist promising you a campaign donation in exchange for a particular vote, you can just hit •delete•, and your problems have disappeared. Legally.

The fact that this reform is novel just shows how dire the conditions are at the local level for the public's right to know.

[Edited for clarity.]

Real-Life Bruce Banners, Uncounted (Transparency Matters, #2)

The worst part about folks being crippled and dying from medical radiation accidents is that no one is keeping track of how many there are.  This isn't just gradual radiation poisoning; in one case, a linear accelerator accidentally burned a hole in a woman's chest.

“I just had a big hole in my chest,” she would say. “You could just see my ribs in there.”

Details of these cases, says the Times, "have until now been shielded from public view by government, doctors and [hospitals]."  It gets better:

The Times found that while this new technology allows doctors to more accurately attack tumors and reduce certain mistakes, its complexity has created new avenues for error — through software flaws, faulty programming, poor safety procedures or inadequate staffing and training. When those errors occur, they can be crippling...

Regulators and researchers can only guess how often radiotherapy accidents occur. With no single agency overseeing medical radiation, there is no central clearinghouse of cases. Accidents are chronically underreported, records show, and some states do not require that they be reported at all.

These are folks that are literally being killed by software glitches and operator error.  This kind of behavior is one of the reasons I rail against privacy, especially the corporate privacy that shields the medical industry from public scrutiny.  Without transparency, we can't find out who's being hurt, where the mistakes are made, who's making them, or why.

But you might think these errors are exceptions to the rule, and are quickly and transparently corrected.  Nope.

In June, The Times reported that a Philadelphia hospital gave the wrong radiation dose to more than 90 patients with prostate cancer — and then kept quiet about it. In 2005, a Florida hospital disclosed that 77 brain cancer patients had received 50 percent more radiation than prescribed because one of the most powerful — and supposedly precise — linear accelerators had been programmed incorrectly for nearly a year.

So, the courts should take care of this, because the victims will be suing like crazy ... right?

“My suspicion is that maybe half of the accidents we don’t know about,” said Dr. Fred A. Mettler Jr., who has investigated radiation accidents around the world and has written books on medical radiation.

Identifying radiation injuries can be difficult. Organ damage and radiation-induced cancer might not surface for years or decades, while underdosing is difficult to detect because there is no injury. For these reasons, radiation mishaps seldom result in lawsuits, a barometer of potential problems within an industry.

The Times article lays out the details of several botched cases, with the eerie precision of a horror movie.

The lesson, then, is that patients have to be careful to choose responsible providers.  Only, nobody knows the good guys from the bad guys:

Patients who wish to vet New York radiotherapy centers before selecting one cannot do so, because the state will not disclose where or how often medical mistakes occur.

To encourage hospitals to report medical mistakes, the State Legislature — with the support of the hospital industry — agreed in the 1980s to shield the identity of institutions making those mistakes. The law is so strict that even federal officials who regulate certain forms of radiotherapy cannot, under normal circumstances, have access to those names.

Even with this special protection, the strongest in the country, many radiation accidents go unreported in New York City and around the state. After The Times began asking about radiation accidents, the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene reminded hospitals in July of their reporting obligation under the law. Studies of radiotherapy accidents, the city pointed out, “appear to be several orders of magnitude higher than what is being reported in New York City, indicating serious underreporting of these events.”

The Times collected summaries of radiation accidents that were reported to government regulators, along with some that were not. Those records show that inadequate staffing and training, failing to follow a good quality-assurance plan and software glitches have contributed to mistakes that affected patients of varying ages and ailments.

It keeps getting better.  Apparently, the privacy of incompetent therapists is more important than preventing malpractice:

In 2008, at Stony Brook University Medical Center on Long Island, Barbara Valenza-Gorman, 63, received 10 times as much radiation as prescribed in one spot, and one-tenth of her prescribed dose in another. Ms. Valenza-Gorman was too sick to continue her chemotherapy and died of cancer several months later, a family member said. The therapist who made those mistakes was later reprimanded in another case for failing to document treatment properly.

The therapist not only continues to work at the hospital, but has also trained other workers, according to records and hospital employees. A spokeswoman for Stony Brook said privacy laws precluded her from discussing specifics about patient care or employees.

And, yeah, the regulators gathering this information are toothless:

Fines or license revocations are rarely used to enforce safety rules. Over the previous eight years, despite hundreds of mistakes, the state issued just three fines against radiotherapy centers, the largest of which was $8,000.

How do we tackle this?  On the state level, or the federal level?  What are the reporting laws in other states, like my home of California?  Are there any good examples of agencies responsibly collecting this malpractice data?

[Thanks to otisarchives3 and Sandi for the pics.]

State and Energy: A Wonk's-Eye View

Ever since my Fellowships at the U.S. State Department and the Department of Energy, I've fielded calls from friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers, all looking for more information about my time there, how I got those gigs, and how those beasts actually function.

Harry S. Truman Building, headquarters of the U.S. State Department since 1947. Courtesy AgnosticPreachersKid.

It's no wonder.  The details available in places like Wikipedia on these bureaucracies are fairly sparse and abstract.  (Which is surprising, since there are a few books on the subject, which I haven't read.)  Where folks do talk openly about their time in such places, they might focus on juicy gossip about their co-workers, scandals, and major events, rather than on how the organizations actually operate—and how folks should use these systems to their advantage, from both within and without.

There are some pretty good reasons for much of this, as will hopefully become apparent.  There are many incentives to keep information hidden, not all nefarious.  Luckily, since I don't work at either place anymore, I can say (almost) whatever I please.

So, as an occasional series, I'll try to fill in some gaps.  I'll start off with the State Department, as it's better-known and more fresh in my mind.  If you have any questions to start off, please ask!

Transparency Now Banished.

I like to think I was into transparency before transparency was cool.  Even Secretary Clinton trotted "transparency" out for the Copenhagen climate talks.  Apparently, now it's passé:

Word "czars" at Lake Superior State University "unfriended" 15 words and phrases and declared them "shovel-ready" for inclusion on the university's 35th annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.

"The list this year is a 'teachable moment' conducted free of 'tweets,'" said a Word Banishment spokesman who was "chillaxin'" for the holidays. "'In these economic times', purging our language of 'toxic assets' is a 'stimulus' effort that's 'too big to fail.'"

Former LSSU Public Relations Director Bill Rabe and friends created "word banishment" in 1975 at a New Year's Eve party and released the first list on New Year's Day. Since then, LSSU has received tens of thousands of nominations for the list, which includes words and phrases from marketing, media, education, technology and more.

TRANSPARENT/TRANSPARENCY

"I can see clearly that this is the new buzzword for the year." -- Joann Eschenburg, Clinton Twp., Mich.

"In the lexicon of the political arena, this word is supposed to mean obvious or easily understood. In reality, political transparency is more invisible than obvious!" -- Deb Larson, Bellaire, Mich.

"I just don't see it." – Joe Grimm, Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

This just makes it official.  I've resigned myself to becoming part of the counterculture.

Cheering for Open Hearings in San Jose

The Merc issued a smart editorial today demanding that arbitration hearings that affect taxpayer money should be opened to the public.

I cheered them on, with the below statement.  Enjoy.

Access to the public is exactly appropriate for any arbitration hearing that affects the public's money. We should go further, however, and demand that all negotiations that affect public funds, such as those highlighted by Councilman Oliverio, should be recorded and made public after a suitable embargo period. This embargo would allow negotiators enough latitude to propose compromises, while remaining eventually accountable to their constituents–whether union members, shareholders, or voters. Even India, with some of the worst corruption in the world, has implemented their Right to Information act, putting similar information into the public domain after 30 days. Democracy only works when our right to know is respected. It is ridiculous that our access to information is worse than India's. Kohl S. Gill Sunnyvale

Scientists Playing with FOIA, Bound to Get Burned: Stop Worrying, Embrace Transparency

Today's scientists are effectively public servants, and should start behaving accordingly.  The public has a right to know what scientists do and how they do it.  To prevent scandals like Climategate, scientific correspondence, critiques, and even data manipulation must be done in public.  The University of East Anglia and associated climate scientists didn't understand that. I'm not sure they do, even now that their emails were hacked and used to sow doubt about climate science.  Jon Stewart sums up the problem better than I can:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Scientists Hide Global Warming Data
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

This isn't an excuse for climate change denialists.  (Please don't call those folks "skeptics".)  Climate change  is real, it's caused by man, and there are reasonable steps we can take to halt and reverse the damage.

The hackers who extracted emails from UEA committed a crime.  In so doing, they exposed that several scientists called people dismissive names, manipulated access to blogs, adjusted data in non-obvious ways, and derided their obligations under the law such as the U.S. and U.K. Freedom of Information Acts (FOIAs).


What bothered me most was the disregard for the law.  The most damning example from the emails I've found includes this passage, from Phil Jones to Michael Mann (emphasis mine):

Mike,

I presume congratulations are in order - so congrats etc !

Just sent loads of station data to Scott. Make sure he documents everything better this time ! And don't leave stuff lying around on ftp sites - you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days? - our does ! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it.

We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it - thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that. IPR should be relevant here, but I can see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who'll say we must adhere to it !

The passage goes on to other topics, but you get the picture.

The reaction to this crime should not be bigger and thicker firewalls, or at least not solely that.  Scientists should realize by now that privacy is not absolute, and in most cases, it's not even a good idea.  They should embrace transparency, by moving correspondence to more open formats like blogs, wikis, and Google Wave.  This move is critical to maintaining the long-term respect and public support for science.  Obviously these platforms need to be adjusted to accommodate the complex manipulations of large data sets; the scientific community is in the best position to demand for and contribute to the development of appropriate applications.  They will find great allies in the library science and open government communities, folks tackling the same essential problem.  One great example is the Alliance for Taxpayer Access.  In any case, scientists need to get out in front regarding transparency, or risk letting deniers define the route, themselves.

Some scientists may argue at this point, claiming that such presumptions of transparency will stifle free and open discussion and debate, that scientists working in the public sphere will censor themselves, and that the best ideas will not come forward.  They might worry that science would become even more politicized than it already is.  These might be fair points; after all, much of scientific inquiry is based on proposing and discarding ideas, ideas that seem crazy at first, but may just be right.

The answer is to embrace the embargo.  Embargoes are already used throughout the scientific enterprise.  Usually, they're used by scientific journals to delay access to non-paying readers, but they can be used in other ways, as well.  Scientist A collects data and wants to analyze it and publish.  While working on it, she shares her data with Scientist B so as not to delay further analysis.  Oftentimes, as a courtesy or by agreement, Scientist B holds his own results under an embargo until Scientist A has had a chance to publish her results.  This avoids confusion over which person should get credit for the initial data and analysis.

Wary scientists should know that everything they do, every email they write, every correction of data, every keystroke, could eventually wind up in the public domain.  The platforms that will serve those scientists best will incorporate a time-bound embargo, with definite and obvious, rolling expiration dates.

As Judith Curry of Georgia Tech puts it (emphasis mine):

[G]iven the growing policy relevance of climate data, increasingly higher standards must be applied to the transparency and availability of climate data and metadata. These standards should be clarified, applied and enforced by the relevant national funding agencies and professional societies that publish scientific journals... The need for public credibility and transparency has dramatically increased in recent years as the policy relevance of climate research has increased. The climate research enterprise has not yet adapted to this need, and our institutions need to strategize to respond to this need.

This actually isn't a loss of privacy–which doesn't really exist, anyway–but rather a move to make science even more legitimate and accessible to the public.  We should all recognize the great value the world has derived from access to earlier scientific correspondence.  Occasionally, the public needs to be reminded that scientific inquiry is a human enterprise.  Transparent scientists are ones they can believe in.

[P.S.: Judith Curry has done a fantastic job of corresponding with (initially hostile) commenters at the Climate Audit blog.  Some of her top comments are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.]


[Edit: Added emphasis.]

Yahoo Thinks You're Gay. Now, Find Out Why.

Ever wonder why you get the particular advertisements you see when using tools like Yahoo?  Most of the time, the ads relate to the content you're accessing at the time, like ads for pet services when you spend all day looking at cute pictures of kittens instead of applying for jobs like you promised you would.

But even if you're not logged in at sites like Yahoo!, Google, or Facebook, those companies tend to collect quite a bit of information on you, creating their own consumer profile of you, which they use to match you up with targeted ads.  Wouldn't it be great to take a look at that profile?  Wouldn't you like the option to edit such a profile, or turn it off altogether?

Thanks to increasing pressure from transparency advocates and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Yahoo! is taking a baby step in this direction.  Yahoo! is launching a test version of it's Ad Interest Manager (AIM), which shows you a summary of the info that Yahoo! has on you.  I haven't logged in at Yahoo! in a while, so without logging in, I took this screenshot of the AIM site.  Now, it definitely gets some things right, like my age range, gender, OS and browser.  It still thinks I'm in DC, which is odd because I'm on the other coast, now.  When I log in, I see exactly the same profile, except that "Entertainment" has been added as an interest.

Note that Yahoo! appears to know who I am, even when I'm logged out!  Yahoo's policy is to de-identify data after 6 months at the most, but they never delete it.

To be sure, this kind of access is only the beginning of what consumers should demand, and the AIM tool has received mixed reviews from confusing, but better than Google to half-hearted.  But, it is a start.

Are there alternative search engines that will show you what data they collect?

[Google's closest analog - Dashboard]

[Edit: Grammar, and the last question.]