Consumer Law

Is the Obama Administration More Open Than Its Predecessor?

By Brian Wolfman

On his first full day in office, President Obama issued a memorandum on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). He quoted Justice Louis Brandeis's famous line that "sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants" and directed federal agencies to "adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure." A couple months later, Attorney General Holder followed suit and "strongly encourage[d] agencies to make discretionary disclosures of information." "An agency," he said, "should not withhold records merely because it can demonstrate, as a technical matter, that the records fall within the scope of a FOIA exemption."

Has this new attitude made a difference so far? According to a review conducted by the Associated Press, the answer is no. The AP reviewed FOIA reports "filed by 17 major agencies [and] found that the use of nearly every one of the law's nine exemptions to withhold information from the public rose in fiscal year 2009, which ended last October." The AP Report is consistent with a another new report from the National Security Archive showing that most federal agencies have not implemented the Obama and Holder memoranda.

Two things worth noting: First, President Obama was in office for only nine months of the period studied by the AP, and it may take time for the new policies to take effect within the massive federal bureaucracy. Second, there are indicia of open government other than how agencies respond to FOIA requests, such as how much information agencies disclose on their own on websites and elsewhere. But the early returns are not good. The Obama Administration needs to step it up on transparency.

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on March 16, 2010 (boomark / email).