On one hand, an Associated Press analysis released
during the week found that the Obama administration in 2012 answered the
highest number during his time in office of FOI requests for “government
documents, emails, photographs and more, and it slightly reduced its backlog of
requests from previous years.”
But the same analysis shows the administration more
often cited legal provisions allowing the government to keep records or parts
of its records secret, especially a rule intended to protect national security
– though some say that may just mean there were more requests for those kinds
of documents.
AP also said that officials were making more use of
exceptions in FOI laws that protect the “behind-the-scenes decision-making
process.”
And the private National Security Archives at George
Washington University issued a report on March 11 noting that only about
one-half of 90 agencies ordered by President Obama to upgrade their responses
to information requests and foster overall openness have “actually made
concrete changes in their FIOA procedures.”
So what is the impact on you or me?
Well, first it means that even though President
Obama’s first act in office was to declare a new effort to make government more
transparent, some things have not changed.
If you write to a federal agency for information not
generally available, it probably means at least as long a wait as in previous
years and administrations – multiple years.
The AP report said that in 2012, “the government
generally took longer to answer requests. Some agencies, such as the Health and
Human Services Department, took less time than the previous year to turn over
files. But at the State Department, for example, even urgent requests submitted
under a fast-track system covering breaking news or events where a person’s life was at stake took an average
two years to wait for files.
And there’s a new bit of irony for those in the
information business. Journalists have had to wait even longer for their
freedom of information requests to be granted. AP said that “the rate at which
the government granted so-called expedited processing, which moves an urgent
request to the front of the line for a speedy answer, fell from 24 percent in
2011 to 17 percent last year.” The CIA denied every such request last year, it
said.
So in an era in which data is more easily accumulated,
sorted, tracked, analyzed and accessed, the response times to our FOI requests
remain firmly rooted in the days of paper, manila folders and file cabinets.
The lifeblood of a representative democracy is
information, so that citizens can make informed decisions at the ballot box
about policy, spending, performance and goals.
For information to be useful, it needs to be accurate, complete and
timely, particularly for financial data in times when budget battles seemingly
are being fought every few months.
Some time ago, Obama also publicly renounced an
earlier administration’s doctrine that became enshrined in the post-Sept.
11attacks era. The president declared that the posture of agencies toward FOI
requests should return to “open-until-closed,” instead of the opposite approach
in the name of national security.
But a government “door” that opens, on average, two
years after citizens knock on it means that those seeking information on public
programs paid for by public funds are spending a long time waiting “in the
cold” – and that’s not good for those in charge of our public policy or for
democracy.
About the author: Gene Policinski, senior vice
president and executive director of the First Amendment Center, is a veteran
journalist whose career has included work in newspapers, radio, television and
online.
This article was published by the First Amendment
Center.
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