From the Center for Effective Government’s federal “Making the Grade, Access to Information 2015 Scorecard”:
“A building block of American democracy is the idea that as citizens, we have a right to information about how our government works and what it does in our name.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires federal agencies to promptly respond to public requests for information unless disclosure of the requested information would harm a protected interest. But implementation of the law since its passage in 1966 has been uneven and inconsistent across federal agencies.”
From a Sunshineweek.org posting by Sean Vitka, federal policy manager, Sunlight Foundation:
While Sunshine Week is about transparency writ large, there’s arguably no single bigger piece of that foundational American value than the Freedom of Information Act. FOIA uncovered details of the torture that occurred at Guantanamo Bay, and led us to J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI file on John Lennon, among many, many other cases about government secrecy. But we need an updated FOIA that fits 21st century information needs.
Passing the FOIA Improvement Act, one of the few truly bipartisan bills during President Barack Obama’s tenure, is the first step to reform. The Obama administration has stated that it hopes transparency will be a defining characteristic of the president’s time in office, but at the same time, it has been working to unravel key tenets of FOIA. For example, why is the CIA still fighting to withhold information about the Bay of Pigs? Why has the administration increased use of discretionary authority to withhold information, while claiming to be the most transparent in history?
Well, to what extent should government employees be required to use and preserve emails related to their jobs? And how?
Hillary Clinton’s situation is a bit high-profile, and New York State’s 30-day email wipe-out imbroglio may be a bit of an extreme, but….
It is a fair guess that potentially revealing communications about decisions supposedly made on the public’s behalf are far too often not available to the public’s eyes via the media, or even to special interests.
It is not just State Department messages. Or mysteriously missing tapes required for legitimately closed public-agency meetings on certain exempt topics in some states. Or meetings that are un-announced or improperly closed.
Or police and military reports with almost everything redacted. Or millions of documents improperly classified every year. Or public officials who resist disclosure because of chicanery, or mere embarrassment, or inertia, or habit, or even simple ignorance.
Or agencies that have insufficient FOI staff to handle ballooning numbers of Freedom of Information requests or to educate their fellow public servants about the law.
It is all of those and more.
One big piece of the missing stuff is widespread public awareness of why transparency matters. Sunshine is one of nature’s disinfectants, and we need to do better telling our fellow citizens.
That is one of the things Sunshine Week is about.
It is also, of course, about our roles as journalists in educating, negotiating with, and when necessary suing the keepers of public records, and in educating the public about its own rights and our task in helping it benefit from those rights.
I remember a politico who said the laws were instigated by journalists entirely for our own benefit to sell papers. But he missed the bigger picture. We and others use access to inform the public.
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