Richard Shelby: “The Administration's resistance to providing the public access to federal research data not otherwise protected from…”

“The Administration's resistance to providing the public access to federal research data not otherwise protected from disclosure under current law indeed contradicts the spirit of current law. The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 requests the Director of OMB to ``foster greater sharing, dissemination, and access to public information.'' OMB Circular 110, Subpart C, is even more specific, stating that unless specifically waived, Federal agencies ``have the right to . . . obtain, reproduce, publish or otherwise use the data first produced under an award''. Unfortunately, these policy directives are not being implemented on a systematic basis. Given the prevalent use of government funded research data in developing regulations and federal policy, it is important that such data be made available to other interested Federal agencies and to the public on a routine basis for independent scientific evaluation and confirmation.”