Activities
October 21 Luncheon Focuses on FDA's Transparency Initiative
Ms. Afia Asamoah, Special Assistant to the Principal Deputy Commissioner, talked about FDA's major transparency initiative. She explained that the initiative was a result of President Obama's desire for transparency and openness in government.
She said a task force was formed approximately 5 months ago and charged with soliciting input from the public on how to make the agency's information on activities and decision making more transparent, useful, and understandable to the public, while appropriately protecting confidential information. All center directors and the chief scientist are members of the task force.
The task force held its first public meeting on June 24, 2009 to solicit input from the public on ways for the agency to make useful and understandable information about FDA activities and decision making more readily available to the public in a timely manner. She said a docket is opened for public comments.
She reported the following updates on the transparency initiative:
- Launched a Transparency Blog
- Posted questions concerning what should agency be doing, etc.
- Used to get real time feed back
- Blog also for FDA employees
- Second public meeting planned for November 3, 2009 to cover:
- Early communication about emerging safety issues concerning FDA-regulated products
- Disclosure of information about product applications that are abandoned or withdrawn by applicant prior to approval, and
- Communication of agency decisions about pending product applications.
During Q and A, FDAAA members alerted Ms. Asamoah to ongoing problems with response time to FOI requests, the FDA website, and their experience trying to contact agency personnel via telephone.
Nancy Myers with Afia Asamoah
Mike Beatrice with Nancy Myers
Submitted by: Sandra Whetstone