Groups want agencies to post more advisory meetings on the Web

Some government transparency groups are pushing the Obama administration to post online videos, recordings or transcripts of meetings that outside advisers hold to formulate new policies for agencies.

Federal law dictates that agencies ensure the recommendations of advisory committees are accessible to the public. But no mandate or policy requires them to provide online access to discussions at open committee meetings.

Some agencies such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Health and Human Services Department have begun webcasting and archiving videos of advisory committee meetings. Government watchdog groups are pressing Congress to pass a bill that would demand all agencies post transcripts or recordings of proceedings shortly after they occur.

"It's hugely important to know what's going on," said Gary Bass, executive director of accountability group OMB Watch.

Congress passed the 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act to shed light on the extent to which policy decisions are based on the input of experts from outside government. Advisory committee members consult agencies on an array of topics, ranging from nuclear threat reduction to civil rights.

A bill (H.R. 1320) to amend FACA, which is pending in the House, would require agencies to post transcripts or recordings on the their websites within 30 days after a meeting. OMB Watch supports the legislation, which grants agencies flexibility in selecting technologies to document the proceedings.

"Give us an archived video or audio of the meeting. Webcast it live. Make transcripts available even. Something that makes it apparent that you're going to make that information transparent. . . . The tool is more or less their choice," said Rick Melberth, director of federal regulatory policy at OMB Watch.

Without videos, people who cannot afford to travel to Washington are unable to evaluate the members' policy advice or learn from it, advocates say.

Even some people who work in the district are shut out due to space limitations. Bass' organization was not allowed in to a May 26 meeting of the national commission on fiscal responsibility and reform. The newly established panel is charged with producing recommendations to balance the budget by 2015. "For the last commission meeting, several groups tried to RSVP to come and the groups, including us, got a rejection, saying, 'Sorry there's no space,' " he said.

Agency officials recommend webcasts to increase transparency and public participation in advisory committee proceedings. "Many fully public meetings would benefit from the increased access," they said in a statement. "In addition, members of the public would be able to access webcasts of meetings at a time and place convenient to them, thereby reducing travel costs and/or reducing scheduling inconvenience."

GSA promotes webcasting through an interagency committee on FACA management, as well as seminars and guidance available to all departments.

In fiscal 2011, GSA plans to start several pilot projects to showcase webcast technologies.

But the expenses associated with recording and archiving meetings are an obstacle for agencies, GSA officials noted. "Cost and complexity are the key issues that limit the use of webcasting," they noted. "Advisory committees are typically funded out of an agency's base budget, so the cost of webcasting is often a significant increase.

"Recordkeeping is also an issue, both in making the webcast available following the meeting and after the webcast is removed from the agency's active website."

Additional equipment, staff and training are required to properly produce an online broadcast. The videos also must rendered in a format that is accessible to people who are visually impaired or hard of hearing.

"FACA is not well-endeared to people inside the federal government. It costs them time, money and energy to comply with," Bass said. "Most government agencies look at this as a pain. Adding in webcasting is just one more hurdle."

But he noted requiring online videos would be "completely consistent with the administration's principle of collaborative and participatory styles. And it democratizes the meetings."

Some government vendors who sell webcasting tools say federal agencies are more constrained by habit and other mission goals than by a lack of technical or financial resources.

"There is a bit of a newness factor to it [but] this is something that has been happening in cities and counties for a pretty long time," said Thao Hill, vice president of enterprise solutions at Granicus Inc., a Web-based software company. For more than a decade, Granicus has supplied agencies at the local, state and federal level with products and services for creating and storing media content.

On Thursday and Friday, HHS will use Granicus software and support to record an advisory committee meeting in Rockville, Md., where members will consider changes to a Food and Drug Administration policy that bars homosexual men from donating blood. The work will cost HHS about $10,000, according to company officials. Granicus' packages typically include the technology and services required to stream the committee sessions with closed captioning, host an archive of videos on an agency's website, integrate meeting minutes with audio and video, and make all content searchable by keyword.

"Honestly, I wouldn't say it's a budgetary challenge," Granicus Chief Executive Officer Tom Spengler said. "It's really around changing the prioritization and making this a priority."

GSA officials said even $10,000 can be too expensive for some committees whose total annual funding is less than $50,000. Often, the cost of simply organizing an advisory committee is a zero-sum situation, since there is no budgetary line item for most advisory committees, officials added.

NIST used Granicus' products and services to air an advisory board meeting in April at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park Conference Center.

The video of the Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board meeting is still available on NIST's website, along with a tool that allows users to look at specific agenda items. Those items include opening remarks by board chairman Dan Chenok, a member of the team that supported Obama's post-election transition who is expected to join IBM this month, and presentations by Web-based software firms Salesforce.com and Google. The session focused on implementing a governmentwide shift to cloud computing, a networking method that uses on-demand, hardware and software located on a third-party company's servers, rather than on federal servers.

"After Obama's mandate on transparency came down, we thought there would be a lot more focus on FACA," Spengler said, referring to a December presidential directive that instructed agencies to create plans for easing access to government information, as well as for increasing public participation and collaboration with the private sector. "It's a great opportunity to create transparency through webcasting, to see how the policy is being shaped."

Office of Management and Budget spokeswoman Meg Reilly said, "[The] directive asks agencies to detail proposed actions to inform the public of significant business of their agency and to propose technology platforms to improve collaboration among people within and outside of their agency. To the extent that it is appropriate, agencies can include proposals to improve their FACA meetings among these proposals, and the public can suggest such ideas to the agencies through their [websites]."