Improving Access

FOIA is Looking Great...Through DOJ's Rose-Colored Glasses

Anyone walking out of the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Sunshine Week celebration on March 11 with no previous exposure to the FOIA system would have thought the process is working better for requesters than ever. Records are released 94% of the time; backlogs are down; agencies are using technology to help them process requests faster. These happy stories do not represent the reality for many requesters, however.

03/22/2013

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Marks Up Sunshine Week Legislation - Video Available

Starting at 10 am on Tuesday, March 20, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee marked up a number of bills that would help make the federal government more open and accountable. Watch a recorded version of the webcast HERE and Read More for our take on some of the bills.

03/20/2013

Groups: House Cyber Bill Threatens Right to Know

Protecting our nation's cyber systems does not have to come at the cost of transparency and accountability is the message of 35 organizations that joined OpenTheGovernment.org last week on a letter to the Chair and Ranking Member of the House Select Permanent Committee on Intelligence.

03/19/2013

Partners Cover FOIA on All Angles

Two OTG partners heralded Sunshine Week with reports on the state of the FOIA and open government.

03/19/2013

What to Watch: Sunshine Legislation

Sunshine Week has grown from a day of freedom of information commemoration to a week-long celebration of government openness, and the public’s right-to-know. The Congress and agencies have also gotten in on the action, and the spirit of the week brought several legislative proposals to the table.

03/19/2013

Groups to FDA: Make FOIA Process More Accountable

On Tuesday, March 8 OpenTheGovernment.org and 16 other organizations dedicated to openness and accountability filed a comment on a public petition urging the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to you revoke the its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) “deletions policy.” Public Citizen originally filed the petition in September 2012.

03/08/2013

Five Minutes for FOIAonline

Sunshine in Government wants to know: do you have five minutes to dedicate to talk to agencies about FOIAonline? As we’ve written before, FOIAonline is a web-based FOIA requesting site aimed at streamlining and improving the FOIA process for agencies, requesters, and the general public.

03/01/2013

Tough Questions on FOIA, and a Call for Renewed Attention to Issues

On February 4th, 2013 the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform sent a letter to the Office of Information Policy at the Department of Justice, posing some important questions regarding OIP’s role in government-wide FOIA policy implementation, compliance, and enforcement.

03/01/2013

CISPA 2.0 as Dangerous to the FOIA as CISPA 1.0

HR 624, the "new" cybersecurity legislation introduced by the Chair and Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee threatens to blow a hole in the public's right to know under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In the interest of encouraging private companies to share cyber threat information with the federal government, the bill, which is called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), unwisely and unnecessarily cuts of all access to any information that is shared.

02/14/2013

EPIC Wins Fight Against FOIA Protective Order

The Electronic Policy Information Center scored another win for openness when a federal judge vacated provisions that would have hampered requesters’ ability to release information to the public. The Department of Homeland Security suggested during a FOIA lawsuit that EPIC should sign a protective agreement that would have prevented EPIC from disseminating the documents in the case.

02/05/2013

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