The FDA Is Getting into Social Media

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has announced the creation of a Transparency Task Force that will help the agency become more transparent to the public scrutiny and also seek “new technologies for informing the public” about its decision-making process. The new technologies they are referring to are all the different types of social media, from blogs to Twitter.

To form this task force there will be a public meeting on June 24, 2009 to gather recommendations on new ways for the agency to communicate its plans and decisions to the US citizens. "Our administration is committed to making government open and transparent," said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "The Transparency Task Force will give the American people a seat at the table and make the FDA more open and accountable."

"Implementation of the Transparency Task Force’s recommendations should make agency actions and decisions, and their underlying processes and bases, more transparent to the public," Principal Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein, M.D., said. "I look forward to chairing this task force and reporting our findings to Commissioner Hamburg."

The FDA has already launched a Transparency Blog, which will provide information about what the task force is doing. Comments will be allowed in the new blog although they will be moderated, but apparently only in order to keep the discussion civilized. The Agency is beginning to be more opened to the web, having recently informed pharmaceutical companies that it had nothing against them engaging in social networking activities.

This new move comes as a unified effort by government agencies to become more transparent and open to discussion. "President Obama has pledged to strengthen our democracy by creating an unprecedented level of openness and public participation in government, and the FDA looks forward to participating in this process," said FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D. "I have asked the Transparency Task Force to deliver recommendations to me for ways to make more information available and foster better understanding of decision-making."