Improving Access

A Status Report on FOIAOnline

As you may know, OpenTheGovernment.org has been running a project that chronicles the experience of using FOIAonline as compared with other agencies’ processing systems. FOIAonline is a shared service that makes it easier for the public to make and track FOIA requests. Our assistant director, Amy Bennett, explained the project to the audience and offered a range of grades for FOIAonline and other agencies during a panel at last week's symposium, “Transparency in the Obama Administration: A Fourth Year Assessment,” held by the Collaboration on Government Secrecy at the Washington College of Law.

01/22/2013

GAO Prepares for a New Congress, and the Public Wins

This summer, we took a look at the Government Accountability Office’s website and lamented that the wealth of valuable information on the site was sometimes buried underneath an unwieldy and unsearchable format. There were moments of effective organization, but GAO.gov wasn’t fulfilling its potential as an informative tool for the public.

01/09/2013

TRAC Launches The FOIA Project

The Transactional Records Clearinghouse is harnessing the power of the internet to paint a clearer picture of FOIA lawsuits. The FOIA Project will organize, link, and index documents related to requests, keeping track of withholding decisions, allowing users to search and explore FOIA cases. The most egregious of the withholding decisions will end up in the Project’s “FOIA Hall of Shame.”

01/08/2013

Judge Denies Requests for OLC Memos on Drone Strikes

Even as U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon ruled that the government was correct to deny requests from two New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union for access to documents related to the government's "targeted killing" drone program, she conceded that the pronouncement had an "Alice-in-Wonderland nature." Indeed, it strikes us as supremely un-democratic and anti-transparency that the government can publicly proclaim it has the legal authority to pursue the "targeted killing" program, but continually refuses to allow the public access to the actual legal analysis from the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).

01/08/2013

12 Days of Open Government Resolutions

Resolution 1: Begin gathering public input for Version 2 of the US National Action Plan

Resolution 2: Make it easier for the public to track agencies’ open government work

Resolution 3: Encourage Agencies to Join FOIAOnline

Resolution 4: Direct Agencies to Update their FOIA Regulations

12/25/2012

12 Days of Open Government Resolutions - Day 7: Agency Data Inventories

Each post in the series of posts we plan to publish between now and December 25 focuses on a resolution the Obama Administration realistically can use to make the federal government more open and accountable in the coming year. See below for links to previous resolutions.

Open Government Resolution 7 for the Obama Administration - Direct agencies to make enough information available so that the public can have an informed opinion of what is "high-value" data

12/19/2012

12 Days of Open Government Resolutions - Day 5: Make Communication with Congress Accessible

Open Government Resolution 5 for the Obama Administration - Direct agencies to make all Reports to Congress and Communications with Members of Congress available in a central location on the agency website

12/17/2012

12 Days of Open Government Resolutions - Day 4: Update Agency FOIA Regulations

Open Government Resolution 4 for the Obama Administration - Direct Agencies to Update their FOIA Regulations

12/16/2012

12 Days of Open Government Resolutions - Day 3: Encourage Agencies to Join FOIAOnline

Open Government Resolution 3 for the Obama Administration - Encourage agencies to join FOIAOnline as soon as possible

12/15/2012

National Security Archive Releases Report on Outdated FOIA Regulations

More than 60 percent of government agencies have failed to update their FOIA regulations since US Attorney General Eric Holder issued is 2009 FOIA memorandum, which instructed agencies to remove “bureaucratic hurdles” from FOIA processing and increase proactive disclosure.

12/11/2012

Our Focus Issues