Reinventing (open) government: State and federal trends

Government Information Quarterly, 1992

Act ("FOIA') (5 U.S.C. 5 552) celebrated its twenty-fifth birthday in 1991. Passed after more than a decade of lobbying and debate in Congress and signed into law (as P.L. 89-487) by President Lyndon Johnson on July 4, 1966, over the objection of every Federal agency, the Act has permanently changed the relationship between the Federal government and the public. On its face, the FOIA is a simple and straightforward statute. Its essence is the presumption that government information is public information, implemented by the judicially enforceable requirement that all Federal agency records be made available promptly to any person upon request, subject only to nine exemptions. Congress and the courts have declared that these exemptions must be "narrowly construed." Proponents of the FOIA see its guarantee of access to government information as an essential component of our democratic form of govemment. Both before the statute's enactment and more recently, its supporters have often invoked the words of James Madison to explain the central role of this statute in our democratic society: A popular Government, without popular i~ormation, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.'

Italian Journal of Public Law, 2019

The purpose of this Article is to analyze the U.S. federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in light of the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016. The Article starts by looking over the FOIA as a model for other legal systems in administrative transparency. After outlining the history of the enactment of the FOIA, the inspection deals with possible reasons for the widespread success of the FOIA abroad. Furthermore, it leads to pinpointing some paradoxes deriving from the implementation of this model in other countries. Subsequently, the Article addresses the FOIA Improvement Act. Firstly, it overviews the amendments. Secondly, it renders an assessment of their implications for the FOIA. However, only the amendments more closely related to the disclosure of records and information are considered. Special attention is devoted to disclosure, meant as a general category encompassing both proactive disclosure-thus, a subcategory-and access upon request. The Article argues that it is incumbent on scholars to make sure that there be no confusion between those concepts. Finally, the codification of the presumption of openness and the amendment brought to Exemption 5 to the FOIA are also addressed. While the former issue appears to be less problematic from a theoretical perspective, the latter raises some issues especially as for the scope of the time limit to applying the exemption.

The American Review of Public Administration, 2018

Freedom of Information (FOI) or Right to Information (RTI) laws are a pillar of democratic governance and have become "a benchmark of democratic development" (Carson & Darbishire, 2006, p. 21). They are argued to increase transparency, responsiveness, accountability, and trust, to help reduce corruption and other ethical violations (Grimmelikhuijsen,

Encyclopedia of Journalism

This brief article describes and comments on the way in which FOIA has become more peripheral than it once was and than it should be. After describing the features that make FOIA a potent mechanism for disclosure and those that limit its effectiveness, the article considers FOIA’s fundamental limitation: its failure to impose affirmative responsibilities on agencies. In particular, it does not require agencies to generate information, and, what is the focus of this article, it imposes only minimal (and frequently disregarded) obligations to disseminate information without being asked. Recent years have seen a modest shift away from the pure request-driven model, and the early months of the Obama administration promised greater movement in that direction. These shifts have been driven more by technological and societal changes than by law; FOIA itself remains tied to the traditional and increasingly anachronistic model. A reinvented FOIA might involve agencies that generate, interpre...

Radical History Review, 1982

For the past half century the tension between our constitutional freedoms and our over-achieving presidency has affected historians most deeply in the area of freedom of information. Now that the Reagan Administration has sought to tip the balance in favor of government secrecy, there is new cause for alarm. Historians, journalists, activists-indeed all citizens-count on an informed public opinion and a government accountable to its citizens. The Supreme Court has consistently held that an informed public opinion is a paramount public interest to be protected through the free flow of information to the people. (Thornhill u. Alabama, 1904; Garrison u. Louisiana, 1964; Time, Inc. u. Hill, 1967.) The court has repeatedly criticized the prior restraint of information except during wartime emergencies, when the survival of the polity demands secrecy. (Schenckv. US., 1919; Near u. Minnesota, 1931.) During World War I1 secrecy was codified for military purposes. Subsequently, President Eisenhower expanded the military classification system to include all government documents. But Eisenhower also believed that far too much material was classified and sought "to insure that no information is withheld from the people of the U.S. which they have a right to know." In response to popular efforts to make government more accountable and to the single-minded determination of Representative John Moss (D-Calif.), Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act in 1966. It soon became apparent, however, that the FBI, the CIA, and other government agencies were employing tactics of delay, evasion, and even outright defiance to frustrate users of the Act. In 1974, in the wake of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, Congress strengthened the Freedom of Information Act. In its introduction to A Citizen's Guide on How to Use

2012

University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional …, 2008

IASSIST Quarterly

Many of the amendments took effect after a 180-day period, on March 31, 1997. Others do not take effect until November 1, 1997, and still others at a later date. While the FOIA and its E-FOIA amendments pertain solely to U.S. federal government records, the influence within the U.S. of this law is such that the ramifications of these new amendments can be expected to be closely watched among electronic records creators, providers, and users in both the public and private sectors of U.S. society, and potentially elsewhere.

Journal of Government Information, 2004

For the first time ever, Executive Order 12958 signed in 1995 established a process to greatly reduce the huge number of classified federal records accumulated since world war II. Although some progress was made under it, subsequent orders and legislation significantly decreased its effectiveness. The U.S. government must take certain actions now to reverse this trend.