Patrice's Prescriptions

I agree with McDermott that the citizenry needs to pay attention to what’s going on, should be outraged by limitations (or complete walls) to access, and should get involved (2007). But, and I hate to sound negative here, it is simply not realistic to think that billions of people all are going to pay attention to information access issues. Some have other concerns, and rightly so. Should a doctor be more concerned about the quality of information access of the quality of health care? McDermott would argue that information access affects everyone, and she’s right, BUT most people have too much on their plates and have to prioritize. Personally, I would rather the doctor I see in the ER be more concerned with the quality of health care s/he is providing than the level of access to government information.

So – then whose job is it to pay attention to information access issues? The people who are information providers, for a start. That means librarians/archivists, library and i-school faculty, journalists, IT folks, etc. Also, people who scrutinize politics such as policy analysts, political scientists, journalists again, etc.

Much of the problem has to do with knowing what information is out there, indexing it, and making it searchable and retrievable across systems (hello the Holy Grail of interoperability). I think those of us who have taken the Seminar in Foundations of LIS know whose job that is. Not government, that’s for sure. It’s a little unreasonable and a lot unrealistic to ask people whose job is politics to do the job of information professionals. That’s OUR job. Why would we even want them doing it? Then what would we do (besides engage in a never-ending debate over the definition and nature of information, no thank you)? A useful solution would be if (and I know how big of an IF this is) government would commission studies on access from experts on access, listen to those experts, and hire real archivists, librarians, database engineers, etc. to organize and make accessible all of the government’s information.

So, is this a question of forcing implementation and regulation of existing policies? Or, is this a question of advocating new policies that make explicit the need for trained information professionals in government positions where they can organize and make accessible government information? I think both. We certainly need FOIA to be enforced. We certainly need the Presidential Records Act (as written and not as interpreted by certain members of the Axis of Evil) to be enforced. But part of that enforcement requires those trained information professionals. You really can’t expect management folks, budget folks, or any other non-information folks to know how to compile a finding aid, organize a catalog, or make any of it searchable through metadata. That’s what we have librarians, archivists, and other information professionals for!

Anyway, we have a little ray of hope right now since we have a new administration, one that at least says it favors openness and accountability, and one that is more inclined than the previous administration to hire/appoint qualified people (as opposed to “favor” appointments) to government positions. So, now is the time for information professionals to begin lobbying for stronger positions in government where we can actually make a difference.

References

McDermott, Patrice. (2007). Who needs to know? The state of public access to federal government information. Lanham, MD: Bernan.