1) The Top Ten Documents should be put on the Web immediately. 2) All three branches (and the independent agencies) should institute procedures that make public access to government information via the Web the rule rather than the exception and an integral part of agencies' missions. In the long run, the Internet could render the old model of FOIA (individual citizen requests information, government employee searches for it, makes a copy and mails it to that one citizen, in a process repeated over and over again until all citizens have the information) obsolete. 3) In the Executive Branch, all documents, publications, statistics, and databases, including, but not limited to, everything printed by the Government Printing Office (GPO), should be posted online unless a senior official gives a narrowly defined reason why a particular item should not be available to the public. Simply placing information online will not suffice, however; there needs to be adequate cataloging and indexing of information. Existing laws already require federal agencies to place information online, but compliance is poor and enforcement weak. Therefore:
4) Federal agencies should develop policies and procedures for accepting and responding to information requests online. 5) Building on the success of Thomas, Congress should fully utilize the interactive nature of the Internet to make full information available (e.g. committee markups, web casts at hearings) and to allow citizens to interact with their representatives online. 6) The Judiciary should undertake a study of openness and the new technology, to develop a plan on how the Internet can be used to improve citizens' awareness of the judicial process, and a way to implement the plan. The study should include stakeholder participation.
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