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15
MARCH 2007
UNITED
STATES: Sunshine Week 2007 brings major audit releases,
congressional action on FOIA reform
As
journalists and advocates across the United States celebrated
the third annual Sunshine Week, several groups released
landmark audits of government openness and Congress moved
forward with significant reform measures to fix the broken
FOIA system.
March
11: Several journalism groups published a nationwide
audit based on results from individuals in 37 states who
sought from local offices an emergency response plan which
federal law requires to be created, maintained, and made
available to the public in each county. Only four in 10
of the officials were willing to provide copies of the emergency
response plans. Read the full audit at www.sunshineweek.org.
March
12: The
National Security Archive published a government-wide audit
that found ten years after Congress enacted the Electronic
Freedom of Information Act Amendments (E-FOIA), only one
in five federal agencies actually complies with the law.
With support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation,
the audit reviewed the Web sites of 149 federal agencies
and their major components and identified the best and worst
on E-FOIA compliance. Read the report at www.nsarchive.org.
March
13: National Security Archive Director Tom Blanton
published an op-ed in the largest circulation newspaper
in the United States, USA
Today:
"Are We Safer in the Dark?"
March
14: Despite strong opposition
from the Bush administration, a bipartisan majority in the
U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R.
1309, the Freedom of Information Act Amendments of 2007.
The Act, if accepted by the Senate and signed by the President,
would institute penalties to encourage timely agency responses
to FOIA requesters, mandate better reporting by agencies
on their FOIA compliance, and provide an alternative to
litigation for requesters to solve disputes with agencies.
The
Senate
Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on its own
FOIA reform measure, the OPEN Government Act of 2007. Witnesses
at the hearing, including National
Security Archive General Counsel Meredith Fuchs and
several media representatives, highlighted ongoing deficiencies
in FOIA performance at federal agencies and emphasized the
need for a congressional mandate to enforce compliance with
the 40-year-old open government law.
Read
more about congressional action on FOIA reform:
"House
Passes Open-Government Bills," by Elizabeth Williamson
and Jonathan Weisman, The Washington Post, Thursday,
March 15, 2007.
"Open
Government Bills Stir Veto Threats," by Jim Abrams,
Associated Press, March 14, 2007.
March
16: Journalists, open government activists, government
employees, and others will join together on Friday at the
conclusion of Sunshine Week to celebrate National
FOI Day, hosted by the First Amendment Center in Washington,
DC. National FOI Day is an annual, daylong program of speaking
and discussion by specialists in various aspects of freedom
of information, updating developments in FOI over the preceding
year.
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