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Published: January 26, 2005
Last Updated: July 20, 2008

Sunshine Week 2009: March 15-21

Sunshine Week and PublishaLetter.com — a new Web site that helps people submit letters to the editors of newspapers around the world — have partnered to give the public an opportunity to write letters in an online round-table about open government issues.

Unlike the other submissions to PublishaLetter.com, this is not a typical letter to the editor process, but instead will operate as an online forum dedicated to open government. Letters will be linked under a special "Sunshine Week" icon for PublishaLetter.com readers, and there also will be a link from the Sunshine Week Web site.

PublishaLetter.com was founded to enable people to not only more easily comment on news issues, but also to post those letters online regardless of whether they are published elsewhere. While the site does not edit the content, it does screen for mass mailings, commercial offerings, gratuitous self-promotion, libel and similarly inappropriate content. To write a letter to the editor of a publication, users must go through the regular PublishaLetter.com submission process.

To get started, follow the links on the PublishaLetter.com home page, or click here to submit a letter or click here to read current postings.

Dorothy Skinner is the winner of the Sunshine Week Citizen Journalism Award for June for her essay posted on Helium.com addressing the issue of whether presidential candidates should be required to release their medical records.

Skinner's essay got right to it, opening with: "Perhaps the question should be why shouldn't they?"

Recognizing there is a reasonable balance between medical privacy and the right to know, Skinner noted, "Everyone deserves a private life but when someone puts himself in the public eye to attain the highest possible position of power and authority, that person must be open to public scrutiny."

Skinner's winning essay is available on the Helium Web site. Additional writings on the topic of candidate's medical records from other essayists also are online.

The July essay contest, which closes Aug. 12, asks writers to ponder whether the government has a role in overseeing the results of federally funded science or if the public has the right to view such information unfiltered.

The newest way to show your commitment to open government and Freedom of Information is by joining the Sunshine Week group on the social networking site LinkedIn.

Joining the group will introduce you to other members with similar interests, enabling additional outreach and contact opportunities using the LinkedIn social network.

Click here to begin.

A new report from the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government, issued on the eve of the 42nd anniversary of the Freedom of Information Act, found that federal agencies and departments have made little, if any, progress in responding to FOIA requests, despite an executive order to improve service.

The report, "An Opportunity Lost," analyzed the FOIA performance of 25 federal agencies and departments. What it found was in stark contrast to a June report from the Justice Department that cited "remarkable improvements."

"The Justice Department analysis was based on the agencies' own performance goals," explained CJOG Coordinator Pete Weitzel. "The CJOG report used the agencies' own congressionally mandated FOIA response reports, which we believe is a truer test of actual performance in handling requests."

Several agencies did achieve significant backlog reductions, but overall, the CJOG analysis suggested, the principal factor in bringing down the backlog was a sharp decline in new requests, taking substantial pressure off the agencies. In 2007 the agencies reviewed received the fewest new requests since reporting began in 1998.

The CJOG analysis found reductions in FOIA personnel and spending, fewer information grants and lengthy delays. One area that saw quicker response time was administrative appeals: the majority of agencies responding to such appeals said "no" more quickly.

The complete CJOG study, including a variety of tables showing both full 2007 results and comparisons by reporting categories, can be found at www.cjog.net.

The cost of keeping secrets is at a new high — $9.91 billion. That figure for 2007, a 4.6 percent rise over the previous year, is what the federal government spent on classification, according to the Secrecy News analysis of the Information Security Oversight Office's 2007 Report to the President. "The ISOO annual report…presents a unique snapshot of declassification and declassification activity throughout the executive branch, though the data provided are often of uncertain significance and are cited with exaggerated precision," explained Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientist's Project on Government Secrecy, which publishes Secrecy News.

"ISOO reported uneven compliance with basic classification system rules and regulations at several agencies," Aftergood added.

Original classification decisions, or "new secrets" as Aftergood calls them, were up 1 percent, while derivative classification, or information that had previously been classified and was classified in a new form or document, were up 12.5 percent for a total of 23,102,257 classification actions in 2007, he reported.

Read more of the Secrecy News' analysis and the ISOO report online.

In October 2007, the then-16 major-party candidates were asked to complete a brief Sunshine Week survey on open government. To date, neither of the major parties' presumptive nominees has responded. Earlier, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards replied to the survey.

With the help of an indefatigable team of researchers, we have collected articles, speech and debate transcripts and other records that give some insight into the presidential candidates' thoughts on access to government information. We have distilled them into brief overviews with links to the source material, including the completed survey responses.

Read more ....

Get the Goods

Whether you support open government or just think Ronnie and Donnie are cute — or maybe even a little of both — you now can get exclusive Sunshine Week and Sunshine Campaign merchandise from our online store at CafePress.com.

Traditional Sunshine Week logo merchandise is available in our main shop, and we've created two others. One features the Sunshine Campaign "spokesmammals" Ronnie & Donnie on T-shirts, sweatshirts, caps, mugs, clocks, notepads and more. The other utilizes the Vote for Sunshine campaign button imagery on similar items, including actual campaign-style buttons.

Any organization interested in co-branding products with its logo and the Sunshine Week merchandise should contact Sunshine Week Coordinator Debra Gersh Hernandez.