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Published: January 24, 2005
Last Updated: March 18, 2008

Source: National Security Archive President Bush’s executive order for a “citizen-centered” and “results-oriented” Freedom of Information system did improve customer service at federal agencies, but has failed to make consistent progress on backlogs and has not significantly improved compliance with electronic FOIA requirements, according to the Knight Open Government Survey released March 16 by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. “Many of the same old scofflaw agencies are still shirking their responsibilities to the public,” said Tom Blanton, director of the Archive. “I’m reminded of how many psychiatrists it takes to change a light bulb — only one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.”

The order set up Chief FOIA Officers at each of 90 federal agencies and asked for FOIA improvement plans from each agency. The Archive’s Survey, the seventh in a series of unprecedented government-wide audits of FOIA performance, analyzed all the agency improvement plans, sent FOIA requests to all 90 agencies (plus 18 major agency components), and queried agency FOIA Service Centers and public liaison offices to test responsiveness.

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The National Freedom of Information Coalition has released a study of the various ways states resolve access to information disputes without litigation. The report,"Mediation Without Litigation," reviews state models such as formal and informal resolutions, and mediation by attorneys general or government-sponsored entities.

"In the end, the effectiveness of any given system depends largely on the political support provided by government as well as state access advocates," Hammitt writes. "Beyond political support, however, these offices are most effective when their employees believe deeply in the right to access."

The complete report, written by Access Reports Editor and Publisher Harry Hammitt, a board member of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, is available on the NFOIC Web site.

As children across America head back to school for the fall, one report card already has been issued, and the performance it evaluates may warrant some remedial attention. (Say, maybe a week in March to reinforce the lessons?) The latest Secrecy Report Card" from OpenTheGovernment.org "shows both a continued expansion of government secrecy across a broad array of agencies and actions and some, limited, movement toward more openness and accountability," according to the executive summary. The Secrecy Report Card looks at trends in classification (down slightly, but still higher than 2000, and costing more measured against declassification); the rise in no-bid contracts (way up); use of "state secrets" label to withhold information (more frequent than during the Cold War); FOIA backlogs and costs (up); and other secrecy indicators.

The Secrecy Report Card also tracks secrecy-related legislation in the nation's statehouses.

Download the Secrecy Report Card here.

Simply stated: "Openness is an American value." So begins a new report on the alarming rise in excessive government secrecy by the People for the American Way Foundation and OpenTheGovernment.org. The report, "Government Secrecy: Decisions Without Democracy 2007," chronicles what it calls an "unprecedented rise in government secrecy." "In the past six years, the basic principle of openness as the underpinning of democracy has been seriously undermined and distrust of government is on the rise," the report states. Read more…

A new analysis of Freedom of Information Act performance reports by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government shows that service continues to frustrate requesters, despite a presidential directive ordering agencies to improve response and a Justice Department assessment that said changes made so far are encouraging.

"Why the disparity? It's simple: the Justice report looked how agencies are doing relative to self-established bureaucratic goals. Our analysis takes agencies' own FOIA reports and measures how they're doing in delivering information to the public," explained Pete Weitzel, Coalition coordinator. "What we're seeing is that all the basic indicators of efficiency — backlog, waiting time, requests granted — are still doing poorly. The only place where we saw numbers go up was in the amount of taxpayers' dollars spent."

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The new edition of "Bright Ideas for Sunshine Week," the annual collection of examples from the prior Sunshine Week, is now online. The collection from Sunshine Week 2006 features a variety of news and opinion from print, broadcast and online outlets, photos from events, creative graphic presentations, examples of student work and, new to this edition, The Big Picture, which shows how several newspapers incorporated Sunshine Week into print and online packages. In addition to showcasing the myriad ways open government was celebrated in 2006, Bright Ideas is designed to be a source of ideas for participation in Sunshine Week 2007, March 11-17.

Also online: "Bright Ideas for Sunshine Week 2006."

Another year and it can toast its anniversary. The longest pending federal Freedom of Information Act was filed during the Reagan administration, 20 years ago, in 1987, according to the Knight Open Government Survey from the National Security Archive at George Washington University. This year's report, "40 Years of FOIA, 20 Years of Delay," was released just two days before the 40th anniversary of the implementation of the federal FOIA on July 4, 1967. The Archive sent FOIA requests for the oldest pending FOIA requests at 87 government agencies and components discovered "not only a broken system, but one immersed in confusion and disarray."

Among the 57 agencies and components that actually responded to the Archives' request, filed in January 2007 — after five months 30 had not even responded — 53 reported a backlog; 12 of whom had requests dating back more than 10 years, and 5 of them reported 17 requests older than 15 years. Those five were the State Department (10), the Justice Department (4), the Air Force (2) and the CIA (1).

Further, 10 agencies reported pending requests to the Archives that were older than what those same agencies told Congress in their annual FOIA compliancy reports. And, among the 40 agencies that responded to the Archive's 2005 and 2007 requests, four reported requests in 2007 that were older than those they'd reported two years prior.

The House of Representatives easily passed FOIA reform legislation earlier this year, but a similar measure is stalled in the Senate on a hold from Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).

The complete Archive FOIA report, and other important information about FOIA and related issues, can be found online.

The American Society of Newspaper Editors gathered 100 newsroom leaders, national security experts, lawyers and other media and access experts to discuss concerns with the increase in compelled disclosure of confidential sources.

Video from the proceedings is available on the ASNE Web site.

Among the speakers were Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff; House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyners (D-Mich.), who read from a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzalez urging the withdrawal of subpoenas to San Francisco Chronicle investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, both of whom attended the summit; Geoffrey R. Stone, Harry Kalven Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Chicago; and Andy Alexander, Washington bureau chief, Cox Newspapers.

Panels, which were moderated by Bob Steele, senior faculty, ethics, The Poynter Institute, and Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, included: Bill Keller, executive editor, The New York Times; John McLaughlin, nonresident senior fellow, The Brookings Institution, former acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Len Downie, executive editor, The Washington Post; and Ken Bass, Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox, former first counsel for intelligence policy at the U.S. Department of Justice. Also: Phil Bronstein, editor, San Francisco Chronicle; Randall Eliason, professor, American University; Eve Burton, general counsel, Hearst Corp.; Joe diGenova, founding partner, diGenova & Toensing; and Lee Levine, founding partner, Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz.

NEW: The Waiting Game: FOIA Performance Hits New Lows. New research by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government shows that the government’s overall FOIA performance remains at the lowest point since agency reporting began in 1998, despite President Bush’s executive order last December directing agencies to become more service oriented and reform legislation introduced in the Congress. Requests remain heavily backlogged, requesters still have long wait times for a response from many agencies and people seeking records and information remain less likely to get the information they seek than in the past. The Coalition collected the FOIA performance reports from the 15 Cabinet-level departments and 15 agencies dating back to 1998. (Feb. 14, 2007) More...

Commercial Uses of Government Information Outpace Requests by Journalists and All Others: The federal Freedom of Information Act is a critical tool for businesses seeking government information and companies conducting competitive research; an analysis of FOIA use showed that about two-thirds of the requests to 20 departments and agencies were from commercial requesters. The CJOG study also showed FOIA use by the media is considerably less than conventional wisdom. (July 3, 2006) More...

Federal Government Continues to Fall Behind In Responding to FOIA Requests: The federal government continues to fall further behind in getting information to people seeking public records under the Freedom of Information Act. The backlog of requests, a critical indicator of information delays, rose from 20 percent in 2004 to 31 percent in 2005, despite a decline in the volume of requests, according to a CJOG survey of 22 agencies and departments. Had these departments and agencies maintained their 2004 level of processing requests, there would have been no significant backlog. (June 30, 2006) More...

On a special page marking the 40th anniversary of the signing of the federal Freedom of Information Act on July 4, 1966, find links to new usage data, historical documents, news and commentary.

Journalist Judy Woodruff hosts a video history of the Freedom of Information Act. Click here for a .mpg file. Go here for a .mov file.

Dozens of editorial cartoons for Sunshine Week 2007 have been sent in by members of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and the Union of Concerned Scientists. The cartoonists have donated their work for use by any participant in any medium for coverage and events pertaining to Sunshine Week 2007. After March 17, they may be used only with permission of the artist.

Click here for cartoons from the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists

Click here for cartoons provided by the Union of Concerned Scientists

The Information Security Oversight Office 2005 Report to the President found that among those reporting there were 14.2 million classification decisions made in 2005, down 9 percent from 15.6 million in 2004. Despite the decrease, however, overall classification decisions remain up some 5.5 million since 2001.

Meanwhile, at the state level, The Associated Press reviewed state laws on public information that have been enacted since the terrorist attacks on the U.S. in September 2001. It found that state legislatures "have passed more than 1,000 laws changing access to information, approving more than twice as many measures that restrict information as laws that open government books." More…

The 2006 Secrecy Report Card from OpenTheGovernment.org shows that government secrecy continued to expand "despite growing public concern." Among the information compiled in the report are data on secrecy trends in the courts and military, FOIA use, classification costs and whistleblowers. More…

David Shedden, library director for the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, has developed a comprehensive Freedom of Information-First Amendment bibliography that includes links to relevant sites and articles, as well as a list of books on the subject. The bibliography is available online at the Poynter Institute Web site.

Meredith Fuchs, general counsel at the National Security Archive, told the House Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census and National Archives that although FOIA does make a difference by empowering citizens "to learn about their government and engage in informed advocacy and voting," it nevertheless "remains plagued by inefficiency, delay and sometimes outright obstruction." Read Fuchs' testimony here.

Clark Hoyt of McClatchy Newspapers, testifying on behalf of the Sunshine in Government Initiative, told the House Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census and National Archives that "the free flow of government information isn't a partisan issue. It isn't a liberal vs. conservative issue. Regardless of party of political philosophy, I believe everyone can agree that the government's information is the people's information and that – with certain exceptions for national security or privacy reasons – it should be available to the people." Hoyt gave several examples of how FOIA helped uncover important news, including a series on how the Veterans Affairs Department is ill-equipped to help Iraqi war veterans. Read Hoyt's testimony here.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) spoke out on the Senate floor to introduce legislation that would open the proceedings of the U.S. Supreme Court to cameras and microphones. Specter remarked, "Under our Constitution, I respect the standing of the Supreme Court of the United States to be the final arbiter and to make the final decisions. But it is, I think, fundamental that the Court's work, the Court's operation ought to be more broadly understood. That can be achieved by television." Read the text of Specter's speech here.

Speaking at a 20th anniversary celebration of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, Bill Moyers, now president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, in a speech developed with his colleague Michael Winship, noted, "The country suffers not only when presidents act hastily in secret, but when the press goes along." Read it here.

In comments following receipt of a First Amendment award from the Vermont Press Association, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) sharply criticized the "rising tide of secrecy" that has become the hallmark of the Bush administration. "We must demand transparency from any government, but this administration, with its penchant for secrecy, requires vigilant attention. This administration’s default position unfortunately has been secrecy and non-transparency, and at a great cost in accountability to the public," Leahy said. Read Leahy's remarks online here.

Former Congressman Lee H. Hamilton, president and director of The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission warned about the danger of over-classifying information in a speech at the Information Security Oversight Office Symposim. "I want more information made publicly available," he said. "Representative democracy demands the free flow of information, so that the American people can be informed about the activities of their representatives and their government." Read the speech here.

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) blasted the Bush administration for "a systematic disregard for oversight and openness" in a speech on the Senate floor. Click here for his remarks.

Cox Newspapers President Jay Smith, chairman of the Newspaper Association of America, appeared before Congress as part of a panel discussing the need to reform the Freedom of Information Act. Click here to read his prepared testimony.

Associated Press President and CEO Tom Curley told the National Freedom of Information Coalition that, "While national security and vigilance against terrorism are critical public concerns, we reaffirm they cannot become excuses for relaxing our defense of the openness that effective democracy requires." Click here to read Curley's complete remarks.

Speakers' remarks and coverage of the 2005 Freedom of Information Day conference, sponsored by the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center, can be accessed via the Web.

The transcript of "The Seduction of Secrecy," a panel discussion hosted by the University of Missouri School of Journalism at the National Press Club in conjunction with Sunshine Week 2005, is available online.

EXCLUSIVE SUNSHINE WEEK LOGO MERCHANDISE NOW AVAILABLE Show your support for open government during Sunshine Week and all year with Sunshine Week shirts, caps, mugs, mousepads, pins, note cards, stickers and more. Give them to staff, supporters, FOI heroes, or yourself. Product details and ordering information are online.