HHS Announces New Open Gov Projects, Wants to Know What You Think
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New initiative will make federally funded research journals more accessible to the public.
Releasing more data proactively and creating easier access to what’s already available are the key goals behind the Department of Health and Human Services' latest open government plan.
The department is currently developing a policy to help the public use federally funded scientific publications. Four participating agencies -- the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality and the Food and Drug Administration -- are working on their own implementation plans individually, HHS said.
The White House last year directed agencies that spend more than $100 million each year on research and development to devise plans to make sure the public, the scientific community and industry can access peer-reviewed publications and digital scientific data. The mandate was echoed in the 2014 funding bill from Congress.
In an effort to answer Freedom of Information Act requests before they’re submitted, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services intends to proactively post information and datasets to its website, according to the HHS Open Government plan Version 3.0, which posted in draft form Monday and is available for public comment.