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2011 Secrecy Report Released: Administration’s Openness Agenda Shows Some Positive Results, National Security Bureaucracy Hinders Change

This morning OpenTheGovernment.org released the 2011 Secrecy Report (formerly known as the Secrecy Report Card), a quantitative report on indicators of government secrecy. This year's report chronicles positive changes in some indicators of secrecy as a result of the Obama Administration’s openness directives. The indicators tracked by the report also show a national security bureaucracy that continues to expand the size of the secret government.

09/06/2011

Policy and News Update for September 6, 2011

In This Issue: [click on the link to go to the corresponding section]

News from Coalition Partners & Others
I. 2011 Secrecy Report Released: Read About the Good, the Bad, and the Troubling Trends in Secrecy and Openness
II. Groups Share E-Records Suggestions for Open Gov't "National Action Plan"
III. September 28 Event Marks International Right-to-Know Day

09/06/2011

Agencies Should Use Open Gov Page to Promote Info Releases

The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) open government page (www.dhs.gov/open) has a good feature: a clear link to a page where the agency posts its policy on proactive disclosures. The policy stems from an August 26, 2009 memo from the DHS Chief Privacy Officer that directs agency personnel to make certain types of records available.

08/26/2011

Policy and News Update for August 23, 2011 - In Brief

Policy and News Update is on recess this week. We'll be back in your inbox on Tuesday, September 6th. Also coming after Labor Day is our eighth annual Secrecy Report, a quantitative report on indicators of government secrecy. This year's report, the first to include a full year's worth of data from the Obama Administration, includes an overview of the Administration's major open government policies. Also, thanks to our friends at MuckRock- an online tool to help people manage requests for government information, this year's Secrecy Report examines data on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from both the government and requesters' perspective.

08/24/2011

Is A Blog with E-Mail Public Participation?

08/16/2011

Working to Make DoD More Trustworthy

Back in June, we wrote about "Why We Shouldn't Trust DOD to Tell Us What We Need to Know" and our work with Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY). Since then, we have had some positive developments in the Senate. We sent a letter urging Senators to support an amendment by Senator Leahy.

08/15/2011

Super Committee Transparency "A Terrible Idea." Really?

Yesterday the Atlantic ran an opinion piece by a senior editor arguing that the increasingly popular push to get the Super Committee to adopt a strong transparency regime is "an absolutely terrible idea." The author's opinion seems to come in part from a basic misunderstanding of what a strong transparency regime looks like. It also seems, though, that he sees a very different world than the one we have seen in experience.

08/11/2011

As Members of Super Committee Are Announced, Call for Transparency and Accountability Grows

This week House and Senate leadership began to announce choices for the so-called "Super Committee" charged with drawing up a plan for $1.5 trillion in debt reduction over the next ten years. As we and several of our partners have been talking about since we first heard of the idea, unless the Committee agrees to adopt a strong transparency regime, the public will have no insight into the content, much less the development, of the final deal until it is announced.

08/10/2011

OpenTheGovernment.org and the Open Government Partnership

As some of our partners and friends know, OpenTheGovernment.org has taken on a coordinating role for civil society/nonprofit groups in relation to the emerging Open Government Partnership (OGP) initiative. We think it is important to explain why we are engaging with the OGP – as it is an international effort -- and what we hope to achieve by engaging.

08/09/2011

Is a Massive Destruction of US Federal Court Records Underway?

Recently, our community became aware of a move in the US Federal Courts to dispose of large numbers of court records. This is not as draconian as it may seem at first read. We checked in with the National Archives and Records Administration – just to make sure this destruction was known to and approved by them. It is. NARA told us:

08/09/2011

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