Open data: A critical tool for police reform and racial equity tech (Getty Images) Jan 14, 2021 | FEDSCOOP
Last week’s insurrection of far-right extremists storming the Capitol spurred lawmakers to consider important questions about the state of American democracy and the smooth transition of presidential power. The nature of the police response, and the contrast with police treatment of Black Lives Matter protesters, has also intensified concerns about racial bias in policing that have been building since the killing of George Floyd last May.
As the incoming Biden administration tackles police reform, open and transparent data can be one of its most important tools for progress. President-elect Joe Biden and his advisers have announced racial equity as a central plank of their approach to “Build Back Better,” and a key part of that agenda is police and criminal justice reform. The administration’s transi
On December 7, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) published a
Proposed Evaluation Policy Statement (the “Proposed Policy Statement”) that seeks public comment regarding the NRC’s use of evidence for many non-adjudicatory agency actions such as licensing, oversight, rulemaking, and others.
The Proposed Policy Statement is driven by a statutory mandate from the 2018
Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act, which aims to improve government evidence-collection activities and ensure that agency actions have an adequate technical basis. The Proposed Policy Statement is intended to help the NRC navigate through various agency activities using widely-accepted evaluation standards as opposed to potentially subjective, and non-systematic standards. While the Proposed Policy Statement uses relatively generic language, the statement and accompanying comment period nonetheless represent an opportunity to help ensure the NRC makes regulatory decisions based on evidence, and