The Channel of Public Papers: Control of Government Information and its Relation to an Informed Citizenry

In this work, U.S. information policy is explored within the confines of bureaucratic and institutional theory using the work of Max Weber, Michael Nelson, and others. The work also explores the bureaucratic origins of information production, organization, classification and secrecy among federal agencies and the executive branch of government. In many instances, bureaucratic size and complexity of U.S. federal government agencies, as well as specific legal rational mandates, act to obstruct information flow to fellow agencies, the public and Congress. Obstruction of information stems in part from Freedom of Information Act exemptions, specific laws, complex levels of national security classifications and misinterpretation by public officials as to what constitutes public information. In this vein, the channel of public papers, a quote taken from Thomas Jefferson on a peoples' right to information, questions the assumption that a wide-ranging freedom of information exists today in the United States. Using Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's ideas of rhizome and plateau as offered in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia supports both the methodological and structural aspects of the work. the channel of public papers is also concerned with those tensions between those who produce information, and those who require it to carry out the obligations of citizenship. Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of deterritorialization and reterritorialization serve to re-establish the boundaries between governmental and individual perceptions of public information, and are used to contrast organizational factors present in information access with case studies of individuals who requested information under the auspices of the Freedom of Information Act, as part of public involvement under Superfund and the U.S. military. Lastly, the channel of public papers entertains the notion that information is a significator of postmodernity as illustrated through the work of Anthony Giddens, Chris Hables Gray, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Paul Virilio.