The Obama Transition Seems to have Impressed Just About Everyone in Washington DC With Its Speed, Diligence, Expertise and Openness. (January 1, 2009)

Changes in government involving the executive branch of the US federal government involve a transition period of about 2½  months. While such a transitional hiatus doesn't occur in Westminster type of democracies, it is rare in either case that at the change the incoming administrations are well prepared to take over even if a dedicated and competent civil service is available.

In the year's first issue of Nature its man in Washington, David Goldston, former chief of staff for the House Committee on Science, reports that president-elect Barack Obama is setting a precedent as regards transitional preparedness.:

There are two types of transition team: policy teams that are organized by topic and designed to look at big-picture issues, and review teams for each federal agency. The names of all the teams and their members are available on the transition website. In an unprecedented move, the site also posts all the written proposals that interest groups have submitted.

Francesca Grifo, who heads the Union of Concerned Scientists' work on scientific integrity, said she has participated in about five meetings with teams covering relevant agencies. "In some cases, we reached out to them," she said, "in others, they asked to meet with us." The Environmental Protection Agency transition team asked the group to set up a meeting of scientific and public-interest groups that had worked on scientific-integrity issues. Transition sources indicate that Obama is likely to issue an executive order on scientific integrity shortly after taking office. At all the meetings, Grifo said, the transition teams asked many questions, but were careful not to give away anything about their own thinking.

[Tobin Smith of the Association of American Universities] noted that science groups are playing a much more active role in this transition than in past ones, partly because Obama's team has been open and partly because of concerns that have accumulated during the Bush administration. "We started being active during the campaigns, and for the first time, we recommended names" of people for science and education posts.

The transition team for the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has met with all the political and career staff at the OSTP at least once, [but] classified matters have had to wait because the OSTP transition team does not yet have the necessary clearances.

Unsurprisingly, transparency does not extend to internal recommendations to Obama... [and]  members of transition teams have been told not to speak to the media.

It will be surprising, international and domestic crises or no, if principal details of President Obama's STEM policy is not known by the end of March.