Flurry of FOI advances for Sunshine Week
Great stuff is going on around the country on the FOI front, thanks to Sunshine Week. Here is just a snippet of some of the awesome advances in making government more transparent and trustworthy:
- Events galore, including panels, seminars and public forums are being held throughout the country. Check out the list of activities.
- FOI projects and content, including audits, stories, editorial cartoons are posted online. Get some good ideas for next year from this list.
- Governments are moving to improve access laws, including in New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Tennessee and Florida. Not to mention the OPEN FOIA Act introduced by Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and John Cornyn, R-Texas.
- The Clinton Presidential Library released 11,000 records involving Hillary Clinton's White House datebook.
- The Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission reported that it handled 715 complaints last year regarding access problems, and 89 percent of those came from citizens, again showing that FOI is not a press issue. It's a citizen issue.
- An audit by the National Security Archive shows the FOIA backlogs are just as bad, despite the president's promise two years ago to speed things up.
- A national phone poll by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University shows American strongly support open government, and that support has grown over the past three years.