The new Obama administration has made a number of assertions about its intentions to make the operation of government more transparent. It has, for example, pledged to make legislative publicly available for five days before it is signed, and directed agencies to do a better job of responding to Freedom of Information Act requests.

How has it performed on my own first test?

I've been writing stories this week on a proposal to study the possibility of moving the nuclear weapons program, now run by the quasi-independent National Nuclear Security Administration from within the Department of Energy, to the Pentagon.

In reporting the story, I have called the Department of Energy to ask if it is true that our new Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, in an all-hands employee meeting, answered a question from the audience by saying that he thought such a move (removing nuclear weapons work from DOE) was a bad idea. To be clear here, I do not know whether Chu said he thinks the proposal is a bad idea. But if he did (and enough people have independently told me they think he did to make it a reasonable question), it would be an important element in moving forward the public's understanding of a story that is of great importance to the more than 20,000 New Mexicans who work for the NNSA.

Two days on, I've still not received a response from the Department of Energy in answer to my question about what Chu might have said.