Presto Vivace's Journal: Obama asks for Public Comment on Classification of Records

The Washington Post reports that President Obama will seek public comment for ways the government can improve the rules by which records are classified and later opened to the public.

Beth Noveck, head of the White House's open government project, said yesterday that a blog dedicated to suggestions about the classification process will be set up on WhiteHouse.gov, where the open government project has been accepting ideas over the past month for how agencies can be more transparent. Suggestions from the blog will be considered for the final recommendations sent to the president.

My favorite quote came from Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists:

"But we don't know if the public comments will be useful, and we don't know if they will be influential," he said. "Just because somebody has a good idea doesn't mean the government is going to accept it. I would not confuse the process with the outcome."