Agencies must disclose how many requests were received, how many were processed and how old is an agency’s oldest request?
This week the Department of Justice is celebrating Sunshine Week – a celebration of openness in government, and perhaps a tribute to Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who wrote sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants in a Harper’s Weekly article published just before WWI. Today is the one-year anniversary of the FOIA.gov, a web site dedicated to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This law – at the very heart of the open government movement – was passed in 1966, long before the web made it more effective.
Any citizen can make a FOIA request about any topic, although there are still considerable delays, prevarications and redactions by government agencies in making politically sensitive information available. Moreover, Congress still largely conducts its business behind closed doors with access only given all too often to the privileged wealthy few and monied special interests that dominate our ‘pay to play’ political process.
Nevertheless, FOIA.gov has statistics for all federal government agencies from their Annual FOIA Report. The agencies must disclose how many requests were received, how many requests were processed and how old is the agency’s oldest request?
This information was collected for years, but until FOIA.gov, analyzing the data was difficult. FOIA.gov takes the data and lets you search, sort and compare information. You can compare one agency to another. You can even compare the data from within the offices of a single agency.
In addition to the annual reports, each agency now files a Chief FOIA Officer report. These reports use numerical data to describe the steps taken to make their agencies more open and transparent. The department’s Office of Information Policy (OIP) analyzes the data and trends in these reports.
FOIA.gov’s Find feature offers a way to search all agency websites to see what information is available on a topic, without the need to submit a FOIA request. Two other changes have been added to FOIA.gov. Earlier this month, links to online request forms were added, including the Office of the Attorney General at the Justice Department. This will make it easier to make requests electronically, and for the responses to appear at the speed of sunlight on the web.
