STATUS REPORT
creating a more open government has already begun to reorient the culture of the executive branch towards greater transparency, participation, and collaboration.
II. FREEDOM OF INFORMATION
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) provides a crucial mechanism for making government more open by allowing the public to request information from the government, which the government is then statutorily obligated to provide, subject to specified exemptions which allow protection for discrete categories of information. FOIA is a landmark statute that has been copied or adopted by many countries around the world. Even so, the federal government's commitment to its implementation and administration has varied some over time, and waned during most of the last decade. Nor has that commitment fully kept pace with a world that has moved from paper to digital information.
President Obama's January 2009 FOIA Memorandum made this Administration's commitment to a reinvigorated FOIA clear. First, the President directed agencies to administer FOIA requests with "a clear presumption" of disclosure. He wrote: "In the face of doubt, openness prevails." The President's FOIA Memorandum also states that "agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public" rather than "wait for specific requests from the public." Further, all agencies "should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and done by their Government." Presume openness; disclose affirmatively; and modernize. In just a few sentences, the President's Memorandum initiated an important shift in the Administration's stance towards FOIA.
The President's directives were echoed by a Memorandum from the Attorney General in March of 2009, also instructing agencies to disclose more through FOIA, to make FOIA a priority, to employ a rebuttable presumption in favor of disclosure, and to improve agencies' FOIA architecture. As the Attorney General explained, "[o]pen government requires not just a presumption of disclosure but also an effective system for responding to FOIA requests." Reversing a presumption against disclosure, Attorney General Holder reversed that presumption back in favor of disclosure. The Attorney General also called on all agencies to employ "an effective system for responding to FOIA requests," and to "be fully accountable for [their] administration of the FOIA." These instructions were further underscored by a memorandum from the White House Counsel and the White House Chief of Staff in March of 2010, instructing agencies to review their FOIA guidelines and staffing, to ensure they were carrying out the President's and the Attorney General's instructions to promote greater disclosure through FOIA.
Of course, improving agency disclosure through FOIA cannot be accomplished in any single step, or for that matter solely through directives from the White House and the Justice Department. Federal agencies receive hundreds of thousands of FOIA requests each year (some departments receive tens of thousands), and they employ vastly different systems (including different software, varying levels and numbers of personnel, varying resources) for processing FOIA requests. Converting top-down directives into changes in the architecture of FOIA at the agency level therefore takes sustained commitment and institutional investment by the agencies
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