It's tough to get anyone to agree on anything these days. But yesterday, over 240 individuals and organizations collaborated to call
on President-elect Barack Obama and the 111th Congress to act on a
series of government openness recommendations. The report joins the ever-increasing stack of recommendations that encourages the new administration to make greater government transparency via technology a top priority come January 20th.
“Moving Toward a 21st Century Right-to-Know Agenda: Recommendations to President-elect Obama and Congress” is the culmination of a project by a coalition of conservative, libertarian, and progressive groups led by the non-profit watchdog group OMB Watch. The report was organized in response to growing government secrecy that the coalition perceives and believes makes the country less safe and less trusting of the executive branch.
Seventy recommendations urge the new president and the incoming Congress to act quickly on a number of key government openness issues while encouraging a more systemic, longer-term approach to a variety of other transparency problems that plague the federal government. Taken in total, the recommendations in the report propose a transformational role for government.
“The report calls for reconnecting our government with all of us, 'We, the people.'" Said Gary D. Bass, Executive Director of OMB Watch. "It calls on government to move its methods for serving the public’s right to know into the 21st century. And it calls on government to make itself more open than any past administration in order to rebuild trust and accountability."
In many ways, the report is a response to the policies of the Bush Administration. After President Bush and Vice President Cheney took office, they began enshrouding the White House's operations in secrecy. The first notable episode occurred when Cheney refused to provide records and minutes from his energy policy task force to lawmakers and environmentalists inquiring why environmental groups were not given the chance to help craft policy.
Shortly thereafter, the attacks of September 11, 2001 were used as a rationale for ushering the country into an error of secrecy. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a memo to agency heads instructing them to refuse Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests if they could make a sound legal argument to do so. The policy flies in stark contrast from the Clinton administration standard, which instructed agencies to deny FOIA requests only if they could reasonably foresee harm coming from the disclosure.
The differences in policy boil down to a difference in perspective about the nature of government records. Clinton believes the records belong to the people, except when national security requires them to be kept by the government and not shared. Bush and Cheney in particular sit on the opposite side of the spectrum, feeling that government records belong to the government and should only be shared when absolutely necessary, or when no argue can be posed against sharing.
The impact of the Bush-Cheney policy shift is tangibly documented. From 1998 until the time Ashcroft issued the memo in 2002, 51.3 percent of FOIA requests were granted. From 2003 to 2007, the number dropped to 42.3 percent, and in 2007, only 35.6 percent were granted – the lowest rate since data collection started in 1998.
Meanwhile, agencies are also taking much longer to respond to FOIA requests. From 1998 to 2002, 14.4 percent of FOIA requests were backlogged. In 2003, that number jumped to 27.1 percent, and in 2007 it was 33 percent.
Of course, simply reversing the policy on FOIA requests will not make government transparent. Government secrecy also comes in subtle and easy-to-overlook forms like innavigable websites or “lost” electronic records. The coalition, led by OMB Watch, divides these problems into three categories:
- A cultural problem where secrecy is the preferred option within federal agencies;
- A policy problem that encourages withholding information; and
- An operational problem with infrastructure that is unfit for the 21st century as well as agency practices that need to be updated.
To combat these issues, the report outlines a strategy for Obama's first 100 days in office that would send a message to Congress, the media, and the public that government will operate in the open. This strategy begins with the new president’s inaugural address, and then advises him to instruct agencies to operate in a more open style on his first day in office.
Technology plays a major role in the report’s recommendations, as it is key to making information easily accessible and useable. After all, information that is available but undecipherable is just as secret as information that is kept under lock and key.
Specically, the group recommends using the Internet to make more government information available to the public. To oversee that effort, they recommend that the president appoint a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) who would be in charge of the creation of data standards for sharing information as well as the security of the system. They also recommend that the CTO direct agencies to create websites that use open source software and distribute data in open formats that are accessible to all search engines. If you don't know what this means, in layman terms, it allows anyone to find and use any information collected by government quickly and easily.
"Those
who took part in this project envision a government where our primary
vehicles for public access, such as the Freedom of Information Act and
whistleblower laws, become vehicles of last resort, said Project director Sean Moulton, OMB Watch's Director of Information
Policy. Instead,
federal agencies should proactively disseminate information to the
public in timely, easy-to-find, and searchable formats. President Obama and Congress must act decisively to achieve
this vision."
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