EFSA extends consultation on ‘Open EFSA’

"Interested parties will now have until October 15 to respond to the authority’s 'vision for greater openness and transparency in its scientific processes'. It said it welcomed in particular comments from national partners, other scientific advisory bodies, civil society organisations as well as experts and practitioners in the field of open government and open science. EFSA invites parties to consider whether the paper is satisfactory in terms of societal and normative expectations, ways of increasing its openness to outside contributions and its identification of a 2-way interaction between its panels and interested parties and what limits should be set on this. It also prompted responses on the treatment of commercially sensitive information and data during assessments, whether EFSA should embrace the principle of 'reusability' and who should be in charge of this. EFSA said feedback, which should be submitted via EFSA’s online portal , will feed into the final Open EFSA policy and follow-up plan."