7.6.2 OPENNESS AND HONESTY

A memo entitled "Suggestions for Anticipating Requests Under Freedom of Information Act" was created by an employee of the NASA Lewis Research Center. Rather than a description of how to facilitate openness in government, it consisted of suggestions on how to obscure meaning and context while preserving documentation. Liberally paraphrased from [Common Cause 92], some of the suggestions are as follow:

1. When a meeting is completed or the day is done, review notes and determine whether they need to be kept. Those notes that are necessary to keep should be rewritten in such a manner as to minimize any negative impact of public disclosure. All of the original notes should be destroyed.

2. Annotate personal documents with "post-it" notes or similar, clip on paperwork so that when the documents are requested all paperwork can be separated. Presenting annotation notes apart from the document to which they refer reduces their significance.

3. When writing by hand, print instead of writing in script. Print makes the identity of the author harder to ascertain than script.

4. Avoid cross-references to other documents that might provide context.

5. If a decision is to be documented, do not refer to any previous recommendations or preliminary decisions unless they are direct support the current decision.

6. When there is any hint of controversy, involve a lawyer. Not only will the lawyer be able to provide advice on the Freedom of Information Act, but in some cases a claim of attorney privilege can be invoked to prevent release of the documents.

These suggestions can inverted to suggest how documentation can be made clear, honest, and open. Documents in and of themselves may not be very illuminating. In terms of such elements, it is easy to see how, like annotation post-it notes detached from their document, the presence of all information at the same level can make the context and the inferences about the process of decision-making and model building difficult to ascertain. In direct contrast to the above suggestions for obscuring information, the following are suggested to provide a contextual element to information, particularly in the computer environment:

1. Retain all notes. If they need to be summarized or rewritten, link the new notes with the old. Destroy nothing.

2. Permanently attach annotations to documents. Allow documents to refer to annotation notes and annotation notes to refer to their documents.

3. Allow your writings to be uniquely identified as yours. Some collaborative writing projects have experimented with having specific colors and fonts identify the writer. At minimum, some identifying tag should be associated with the writing.

4. Cross-reference to other documents that would provide context.

5. Document decisions in terms of previous recommendations or preliminary decisions even if they are in contrast to the final decision. Document political influences on the decision as being as valid as technical influences.

6. Within software engineering, knowledge engineers are akin to lawyers. While providing systematic structuring and modeling in terms of law (whether governmental or natural), they do seem to make jobs for themselves simply to perpetuate their existence. The modeling of knowledge is best left directly to the expert, if possible. Tools should be developed to allow experts to develop knowledge bases without the involvement of a programmer or knowledge engineer. With the intervention of the knowledge engineer, like lawyers, there is created an intermediary layer that acts as a wall between the pragmatic use knowledge and access to the law or science.