OMB Policy on Posting Information Sparks Debate

OMB policy on posting information sparks debate: "The Office of Management and Budget’s new policy asking agencies to improve how they disseminate public information is at the heart of a larger battle over how much categorization is needed to make government information publicly accessible.

The new policy, required by the E-Government Act of 2002, is another piece in an ongoing disagreement over whether search technology is good enough to find specific instances of government information or whether metadata tagging and other categorization techniques are necessary at some level.

In a memo issued late last week, Clay Johnson, OMB’s deputy director for management, detailed three steps—for the most part involving publishing materials online—agencies must complete by Sept. 1 to meet the requirements outlined in Section 207 of the E-Government Act of 2002."