Open government

====
* Planks about open government from Mark Rauterkus
* Notes about open government from Fumo
==Links==
* Democracy
* Freedom of Information Act
* PA Freedom of Information Coalition 
* http://www.opengovpartnership.org/country/united-states/progress-report/2013-2015-us-progress-report
===Media===
* Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility: News Release June 29, 2006 10,000 EPA SCIENTISTS PROTEST LIBRARY CLOSURES — Loss of Access to Collections Will Hamper Emergency Response and Research
:Washington, DC — In an extraordinary letter of protest, representatives for 10,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientists are asking Congress to stop the Bush administration from closing the agency’s network of technical research libraries. The EPA scientists, representing more than half of the total agency workforce, contend thousands of scientific studies are being put out of reach, hindering emergency preparedness, anti-pollution enforcement and long-term research, according to the letter released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
==Insights==
The open society concpet was used by a philosopher, Henri Bergson, in a book The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. One source, according to Bergson, is tribal and leads to a closed society whose members feel affinity for each other but fear or hostility towards others. The other source is universal, leading to an open society guided by universal human rights that protects and promotes the freedom of the individual.
Karl Popper modified this scheme in the book, The Open Society and Its Enemies, published in 1944. Popper pointed out that an open society can be endangered by abstract, universal ideologies like communism and fascism. Because these ideologies’ claim to be in possession of the ultimate truth is bound to be false, they can be imposed on society only through repression and compulsion. By contrast, an open society accepts uncertainty, and it establishes laws and institutions that allow people with divergent views and interests to live together in peace.
President George W. Bush’s war on terror undermined the basic principles of American democracy by expanding executive powers. It undermined the critical process that is at the heart of an open society by treating any criticism of the administration’s policies as unpatriotic, thereby allowing Bush to order the invasion of Iraq.
Worse still, the war on terror was counterproductive. It increased the terrorist threat by creating innocent victims, while leading to a precipitous decline in American power and influence. As a result, the US is no longer in a position to set the world’s agenda.
* The EU could become the prototype of a global open society.