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Transparency Recommendations for Obama Administration

Published: November 07, 2008
Last Updated: November 20, 2008

Read the Obama Transition Plans
For Improving Government Transparency

Throughout the campaign, President-elect Obama put forward ambitious proposals for increasing government openness through technology and good old-fashioned sunshine. Several open government and technology experts and advocates have since issued their recommendations to the new administration, some of which have been collected here.

Understanding, utilizing and protecting communication on the Internet should be a priority for the Obama administration, according to the Center for Democracy & Technology.

"The Internet has made it easier than ever before for ordinary citizens to interact with government agencies," CDT noted in its Election 2008 section on Open Government. "As Americans increasingly manage their business, personal and financial affairs electronically, they rightfully expect their government to make services and information available over the Internet."

Specifically, CDT recommends the new administration dedicate itself to transparency and accountability, use technology to increase citizen involvement in government, and implement FOIA "in a spirit of responsiveness and openness." Read more here.

While the bulk of recommendations from the Center for Progressive Reform focused on public health and the environment, a section of its report to the new president looked at promoting transparency in FOIA and during regulatory review.

"The new President should issue an executive order restoring open government in three areas where unwarranted secrecy has developed," CPR's white paper stated. "The order should restore the presumption of disclosure concerning exemptions from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) so that political appointees and career government employees cannot operate free of scrutiny; forbid agencies from taking advantage of loopholes that limit the transparency provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) so that the public can be assured that special interests do not have undue influence on agency decisionmaking; and improve the transparency of regulatory review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) so that efforts by political appointees in the White House to override the judgment of scientists and other experts in regulatory agencies can at least be transparent to the public." Read more here.

In the third of three proposals for how the Obama administration "can restore some of the civil liberties we've lost over the past eight years," the Electronic Frontier Foundation put forward three steps to improve government transparency. Previous posts focused on surveillance and intellectual property.

"The past eight years have seen an increase in government secrecy and a decrease in government accountability," EFF Activism and Technology Manager Tim Jones wrote. "These factors have led to record levels of distrust in our government."

EFF's recommendations are to leverage technology to provide government information, review and reform the classification structure, and reinvigorate the Freedom of Information Act to "encourage government agencies to produce documents." Read more here.

The Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News Blog looked at how changes implemented by the Obama administration might affect secrecy policy, and offered suggestions for where to begin.

A good place to start, suggested Steve Aftergood, "would be a systematic review of all of the thousands of agency classification guides, geared towards eliminating obsolete or unnecessary classification instructions. Classification guides are the secrecy system's 'software.' Revising and updating them would be likely to pay immediate dividends in reduced classification.

"Beyond that," Aftergood added, "there may be a once in a generation opportunity to fundamentally rethink the structure of the national security classification system, and to conceive of something altogether new, different, and better. What that might be remains to be discovered and articulated." Read Aftergood's overview here.

The Liberty and Security Transition Coalition, a group of more than 25 organizations and 75 individuals pulled together by the Constitution Project, has issued a broad catalog of recommendations.

The report, said Constitution Project Policy Counsel Becky Monroe, "includes recommendations drawn from the shared knowledge and experience of a broad coalition of groups devoted to exploring the intersection of civil liberties and national security."

Among the coalition's transparency recommendations are the issuance of a presidential memo ordering the executive branch to operate under a presumption of openness and an attorney general' directive stating the same; a reworking of the controlled unclassified information (CUI) system; reduction in further unnecessary information controls; a revocation of the executive order limiting release of presidential records; and disclosure of the annual intelligence budget.

The Liberty and Security Transition Coalition also proposed solutions for preventing overclassification of government documents and reforming use of the state secrets privilege.

The coalition's full report is available online here. The section on Secrecy, Surveillance and Privacy can be found online here.

The National Security Archive has been joined by more than 60 organizations in its openness recommendations to the incoming Obama administration regarding the Freedom of Information Act, reform of the classification system, and preservation of presidential records.

"President-elect Obama can make a difference on Day One in the way his administration relates to the public," noted Archive General Counsel Meredith Fuchs. "Secrecy got out of control in the last eight years, but a few focused directives will go a long way towards reopening the government."

The Archive suggested that during his first days in office, the new president can issue a memo on FOIA "that establishes a policy of maximum possible public disclosure of government records" and directs the new attorney general to put forth a similar directive reinstituting "the presumption of openness."

President-elect Obama was also called on to revoke President Bush's executive order limiting the release of presidential records, and to issue a new presidential directive addressing abuses of the classification system. Read more here.

At OMB Watch, a set of recommendations for improving government transparency has been developed by the 21st Century Right to Know project, a yearlong effort involving more than 100 groups and individuals from across the country.

"Over the past several years, the release and disclosure of government information, whether it be health, safety, environmental, financial, or national security information, has taken a backseat to misguided homeland security policies and efforts to protect special interests," OMB Watch noted. "With a new president and Congress, we expect there will be increased awareness of the need for greater disclosure of federal government practices and information. This project seeks to capitalize on that opportunity and create a unified message to the next president that great improvements in government transparency are desperately needed to help restore the public's trust in government."

The report is available online, and those wishing to sign can do so online here.

The Project On Government Oversight recommended several steps the new administration can take to specifically address ensuring an "effective, accountable, open and honest government."

In the openness category, POGO suggested that the federal government "should automatically post all releasable information at publicly available Web sites," and that "all information released publicly through FOIA should promptly be made available online."

Other issues addressed in the report include overclassification, whistleblower protection, contractor accountability, agency oversight and overuse of executive signing statements. Read more here

The Radio-Television News Directors Association has published an overview of how policies of the Obama administration likely will affect electronic journalists.

Among the topics examined by RTNDA President Barbara Cochran were regulation and the Federal Communications Commission, new technology, and issues involving the First Amendment, open government and free press.

"While Obama has supported the important legislation backed by journalism groups such as RTNDA, it remains to be seen what day-to-day relations with the press will be like in the Obama White House," Cochran wrote. "During the campaign, there were strains over access to the candidate and the frequency of his press conferences. After initially promising to meet with the press on Wednesday, the day after the election, the president-elect scheduled his first post-victory news conference for Friday." Read more here.

Reporters Without Borders has written to presidential candidates Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Sen. John McCain (D-Ariz.) urging them to protect freedom of the press in the U.S. and around the world.

"Journalists are guardians of democracy whose rights must be protected around the world, not least in the United States, to which emerging democracies look for guidance, and where free speech is an inalienable right explicitly protected by the Constitution,” Reporters Without Borders said, noting that in the just-released 2008 Press Freedom Index, the U.S. ranks 36th out of 173 countries. Read more here.

The Sunlight Foundation asked "a healthy cross-section" of "technology geeks, policy wonks, bloggers, journalists, optimists and pragmatists" to weigh in on how technology can be used improve government transparency, and it has presented the results online in an open letter to the Obama administration.

"Your campaign," Sunlight Communications Director Gabriela Schneider wrote to Obama, "embraced the Internet and engaged millions of Americans in unprecedented ways. Keep that momentum going. Your administration can make our government more open, more responsive, more accountable and thus more trusted by the people." Read more here.

Sunlight Foundation also has launched the Open Senate Project, an initiative designed to improve online public access to information from the U.S. Senate. The Senate work is based on Sunlight's successful Open House Project and is endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Citizens are encouraged to participate by joining the e-mail list. Read more here.

The Sunshine in Government Initiative, an open-government coalition of nine media organizations, has proposed in a letter to President-elect Obama a series of immediate, concrete steps to "counteract years of growing secrecy."

Specifically, SGI suggested that Obama: restore a presumption of openness to the Executive Branch, create an independent ombudsman to help citizens access government information, ban unnecessary statutory exemptions from disclosure, and speak on the record — and encourage senior staff to do the same — about policy and other issues of public interest.

"President-elect Obama can act quickly to make transparency in government a signature component" of his administration, said SGI Coordinator Rick Blum, adding that these actions would show that Obama "intends to fulfill his pledge to restore open government in Washington." Read more, including a brief white paper on the issues, here.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has released its report card on the media policies of 15 federal regulatory and science agencies. The report, which found "no consistency among agency policies," tracked "the degree of freedom with which science is communicated at federal agencies" with an eye to making "reforming the communication of federal science…a priority for the next administration."

"The next administration should require all federal agencies to adopt policies that ensure free and open communication between scientists, the media, policy makers and the public," stated the UCS report, which is online here.

In addition, the UCS has proposed a series of "big picture solutions" to ensure those appointed to lead scientific agencies commit to promoting openness and clear communication, as well as preserving scientific intergrity. Read more here.

The World Resources Institute has issued a policy paper that calls on the next president elect to commit to "transparency, inclusiveness and accountability in government."

In "Presiding with Principle" WRI Program Coordinator Remi Moncel notes that to succeed in the face of "an unprecedented set of complex and urgent challenges," the 44th president "needs to respond with a combination of strong leadership, participatory democracy and informed decision-making that reflects principles of good government and respect for the rule of law." Read more here.