Juliana Birkhoff Discusses FACA - Part 1 of 2

Published November 19th, 2008 by Juliana Birkhoff
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In Part 1, Andrew Maxfield and Juliana Birkhoff discuss the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), a measure enacted in 1972 to ensure that advice by advisory committees is objective and accessible to the public.

The Act formalized a process for establishing, operating, overseeing, and terminating these advisory bodies and created the Committee Management Secretariat to monitor compliance with the Act. (See an overview at www.gsa.gov.)

Juliana describes the Act's genesis and the kinds of problems it was designed to address. Additionally, she discusses the so-called FACA-phobia evinced at some agencies, barriers to effective implementation, as well as successes.