When the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) revised its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) regulations last month, it adopted language that might inflate requesters’ FOIA costs across all agencies. Fortunately, its rule is not the final word on what a requester lawfully can be charged to compel prompt disclosure of unclassified federal records.
Legislative background and hierarchy
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Read More… from Opinion: Making dollars and sense of DOJ’s new FOIA fee rule
State Treasurer Dennis Milligan has responded to recent news reports on events during his campaign for office by claiming that the emails that are the basis of the reports cannot be verified because his campaign deleted all its emails after the election.
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Read More… from Some question Arkansas email deletion policies
In a groundbreaking victory for open-government advocates, a Sacramento County Superior Court judge on Thursday ordered the state Senate and its leaders to turn over the appointment calendars and other records of two former state senators.
In a sweeping decision, Judge Michael Kenny tentatively ruled that the appointment books, meeting schedules and calendars of former Democratic Sens. Leland Yee and Ron Calderon requested by two news organizations are public records.
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Read More… from California state senators’ calendars should be released to the public, judge rules
While not the only source of open data, government can play an important wider supporting role, no matter who manages or provides the information beyond the General Election, argues Open Data Institute technical director Jeni Tennison.
Government collects, maintains and provides access to a whole range of data. It manages information to aid decision making, including geospatial data, the census and crime surveys.
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Read More… from Opinion: How can government support open data without doing it all itself?
President Obama has routinely promised greater transparency within the federal government. Now, Congress is making strides toward achieving this critical goal.
The House of Representatives and the Senate are considering nearly identical bills to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which provides the general public, including journalists, with access to federal government records.
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Read More… from Opinion: Why strengthening the Freedom of Information Act is so important
The State Department has about three weeks to propose a date by which it will release tens of thousands of work-related emails former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent or received on her personal account, a federal judge said in an order issued Tuesday.
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Read More… from Judge sets deadline for deadline to release Hillary Clinton emails
There are several instances where the inaction of the Attorney General’s office leads to the public being improperly denied public records. This is simply another case we decided to highlight today – more are coming:
Last summer Cook County decided it could violate the law and deny access to public records. I filed a request for review with the Attorney General’s Public Access Counselor, and it was assigned file number 2014 PAC 30503.
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Read More… from Illinois AG Lisa Madigan rendering FOIA Law useless –
Statewide court records maintained by the Supreme Court of Virginia should be publicly available in compiled form, according to an opinion issued by the state's Freedom of Information Advisory Council.
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Read More… from No basis for Virginia Supreme Court to withhold records, state council says
President Barack Obama routinely promises to provide greater transparency within the federal government. Now, Congress is making strides toward achieving this critical goal.
The House of Representatives and Senate are considering nearly identical bills to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act, which provides the general public, including journalists, with access to federal government records.
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Read More… from Editorial: We need to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act
You’d think that if you were going to get a timely and adequate response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the federal government, it would be from the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy, which oversees the government’s compliance with FOIA requests.
But if you thought that, you’d be wrong.
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Read More… from Opinion: Federal government fails basic openness test
