Independent Science Committees

Some committee websites still host this information, but if the website has been archived or erased, you can try to find the materials on the Internet Archive using the Wayback Machine. You can also access some formal committee materials and information on members and deliverables on the Government Services Administration’s FACA Database. (Learn more about how to use the FACA database.) If neither of these options work for you, you can try reaching out to the Designated Federal Officer for your committee or the home agency’s Committee Management Officer (full list here).

You can continue to track the committee as it brings on new members and begins meeting again. You and your committee members can participate individually or as a group to review the committee’s charges, meeting deliberations, and recommendations and hold them accountable for using the best available science and incorporating a diverse and balanced set of perspectives. Depending on your capacity and interest among members, you could set up a coordinated response effort and deliberate in your own virtual or in-person meetings, or you can participate by submitting public comments and presenting them at the committee’s regularly scheduled meetings.

Setting up an independent advisory committee means that you are not operating under the official FACA rules, but there are still parts of federal advisory committee requirements that can and should be adopted to uphold the credibility and integrity of your group. It’s important for members of the committee to commit to review meeting materials in advance of meetings and coming prepared to exchange views and perspectives and search for consensus-based solutions and to maintain an environment that promotes open discussion and equitable participation. Additionally, members should keep in mind that science advice should be free from conflicts of interest and appearance of impartiality, so if there are known conflicts on any issues that the committee is discussing, members should be transparent and proactively elect to recuse themselves.

Try to find the membership balance plan for your committee or look at the charter and your current composition and try to fill gaps with the right amount of technical expertise and lived experience. If you are missing key representatives from industry or state or local government, make sure you have a fair balance of viewpoints and backgrounds. You can also review guidance material from the General Services Administration.

You can use the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) Form 450 for Special Government Employees as a template for how you might document and track conflicts from committee members. These forms are required for all members of federal advisory committees that join as “special government employees.” You can review OGE guidance for analyzing potential conflicts of interest and guidance on appointments from the General Services Administration.

The Federal Advisory Committee Act requires advisory committees to make advisory committee documents available to the public, including meeting agendas, pre-decisional materials such as drafts, working papers and studies, meeting minutes and transcripts, reports and studies, and other documents prepared for or by an advisory committee. Often these materials are stored or archived on the committee’s webpages and/or in the FACA database. In some cases, there may be some pre-decisional and privileged documents that are exempted from disclosure. For more information, you can review the General Services Administration guidance on this topic.

Posting it on a webpage and sharing it on social media (LinkedIn, Instagram, X, Bluesky) are options. You can also ask committee members to share meeting information with their networks, including scientific associations. You can review previous committee meeting minutes, especially the public comments, and reach out to organizations, companies, government representatives, and individuals who have commented in the past. You can also share the meeting notice with elected officials who are on relevant House and Senate committees and with reporters who cover issues relevant to the committee’s recommendations.

For a virtual meeting, you will need to host the meeting over a web conferencing platform such as Zoom or Teams. The Federal Advisory Committee Act required at least 15 days of notice in advance of a committee meeting, but you should provide at least a month of advance notice if possible. If you are providing opportunities for members of the public to comment, make sure that you share an agenda with the public comment period time clearly listed so they can choose to join only for that portion of the meeting. You should make sure that you have a meeting transcript application running or a person who can take notes and create a meeting minutes document. You may consider livestreaming your zoom meeting on Youtube.

The Federal Advisory Committee Act requires at least 15 days notice in advance of a committee meeting, but you should provide at least a month of advance notice, if possible. To keep costs down for an in-person committee meeting, consider hosting using a meeting room at a committee member’s institution or a community center, library, or a partner’s office building in a location central to committee members or in a place that is easily accessed by airport and rail. Ideally, the event space will have teleconferencing ability and A/V equipment to accommodate those committee members and members of the public who are unable to travel. You should make sure that you have a meeting transcription application running or a person who can take notes and create a meeting minutes document. You may consider livestreaming your zoom meeting on Youtube.

You can keep to the estimated number of annual meetings in your committee’s charter or you can decide as a committee to hold more or less than that based on the type of work you expect to work on together and the demand for recommendations from end users outside of the federal government.

You can invite journalists, partner organizations, and members of Congress to attend and cover the meeting. You may also consider publishing a summary of your recommendations to a journal in a relevant field. If you have a webpage, you can post the meeting materials and final recommendations and share widely within the networks of committee members and the state, local, and Tribal governments, and other organizations that may benefit from your work. If there is an upcoming agency decision or rulemaking that the committee feels would benefit from its recommendations, consider submitting a comment and posting the recommendations to the regulatory docket.