Wednesday, July 11, 2007
In a memorandum entitled "On the Public's Right to Proprietary Data"
Guinevere Jobson of the American University Law Clinic addresses the important
media policy question "Is there a public right to access proprietary information
where the government uses public funds to purchase the information and relies on
that information in its decision-making process?"
Prepared for the SSRC
Data Consortium on Media and Communications Policy, the memorandum examines four
legislative and regulatory mechanisms for access - The Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA), the Shelby Amendment, the Data Quality Act (DQA) and OMB Peer
Review. Jobson concludes that while none of the identified means provide
complete, unfettered access to information, the current state of the law
provides mechanisms that can be better and more creatively utilized to enhance
the public's right to information - especially in an era of widespread
privatization of formerly public data collection functions.
Read
the full text of Ms. Jobson's analysis