Conventional wisdom in Washington dictates that the private sector can always provide services at a lower cost than the federal government. A new study from the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), however, turns conventional wisdom on its head, demonstrating that the government rarely reaps the purported benefits of lower costs through the outsourcing of service work. In fact, POGO found that, on average, the government pays service contractors more than 1.8 times the amount it pays federal employees with the same education, doing the same job and performing similar tasks.

On Sept. 2, 30 U.S. public interest groups joined civil society organizations around the globe in demanding that their national governments improve access to environmental and public health information and increase public participation in environmental policymaking. These organizations are calling on their governments to make such commitments at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) in order for people around the world to be able to effectively use environmental information to protect themselves, their families, and their communities from pollution, toxic chemicals, and other hazards.