The Food and Drug Administration today (FDA) took its first steps in a mostly online "transparency" project designed to explain to the public how the health regulatory agency operates and how it makes decisions in the drug approval process.
As part of the plan, FDA offer will Web-based videos about the agency's tasks, such as how to find out if a drug is approved, and online forums where the public may question senior officials about how drugs and medical devices move to market. FDA will detail the services on its Web site.
The transparency project is part of the Obama administration's Open Government Initiative, its plan to make federal agencies more accessible and to share information more widely. The FDA's initiative is being led by Joshua Sharfstein, principal deputy FDA commissioner.
Last year, FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg created an agency task force to recommend how to make FDA's operations and decision-making processes more transparent.
In recent months, the task force has received hundreds of public comments on making the agency more open, published an online blog and conducted two public meetings, all of which shaped the agency's transparency activities, Sharfstein said.
Next, the task force will recommend how to make agency information more useful and understandable to the public while still being able to protect confidential information.
The panel will also advise how FDA can be more open to the industries it regulates. More information about FDA's transparency task force are available here.
