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Published: January 24, 2005
Last Updated: November 07, 2008

The number of political candidates willing to answer non-partisan survey questions about their positions on a variety of issues has plummeted over the past 12 years, according to a report from Project Vote Smart.

In 1996, about three-quarters of congressional (72 percent) and gubernatorial (77 percent) candidates responded to Project Vote Smart's Political Courage Test, a balanced, though comprehensive, position survey. By the 2008, the numbers had fallen to 41 and 46 percent, respectively. Responses by state legislative candidates have tracked even lower, logging in at 36 percent in 1996 and just 21 percent in 2008.

Incumbents in 2008 also tracked significantly lower than challengers. Eight in 10 members of Congress running for re-election declined to respond, compared to just over half of their challengers. Only one out of four incumbent governors in the race answered the survey questions; and just 14 percent of incumbent state legislators participated.

Read more on the Project Vote Smart Web site.

The State of the First Amendment 2008 report from the First Amendment Center finds, "Americans traditionally support the general concepts of free expression and religious liberty, but when asked about specific situations, many appear willing to accept a measure of government involvement or even control," according to First Amendment Center Vice President and Executive Director Gene Policinski. "The nation's Founders, however, saw the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights as guarantees against a power central government created by the Constitution," he added. Among the findings, 20 percent of Americans say the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees, down from 28 who responded similarly in the 1999 survey.

More than three-quarters of respondents agree that it's important for democracy for the news media to act as a watchdog over government, and two-thirds agree (64 percent) that bloggers should have the same First Amendment protections as professional journalists.

Read more from the report and Policinski's analysis here.

The 2008 Secrecy Report Card from OpenTheGovernment.org found "both a continued expansion of government secrecy…and some movement toward more openness and accountability, particularly in the Congress." Some of the secrecy trends highlighted in the report include: 5 percent growth in spending on maintaining classification versus declassification ($195 per $1, respectively); an increase in the number of new patents kept confidential under "secrecy orders"; greater backlogs in processing Freedom of Information Act requests; and the ninth consecutive year of growth in secret orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

On the openness front, the Secrecy Report Card noted that Congress has moved against unwarranted and excess secrecy with legislation such as the OPEN Government Act, which became law at the end of 2007 — though not without the administration's attempt to eliminate the office of FOIA ombudsman.

The 2008 Secrecy Report Card and press release are online at OpenTheGovernment.org.

A report from the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government, issued on the eve of the 42nd anniversary of the Freedom of Information Act, found that federal agencies and departments have made little, if any, progress in responding to FOIA requests, despite an executive order to improve service.

The report, "An Opportunity Lost," analyzed the FOIA performance of 25 federal agencies and departments. What it found was in stark contrast to a June report from the Justice Department that cited "remarkable improvements."

"The Justice Department analysis was based on the agencies' own performance goals," explained CJOG Coordinator Pete Weitzel. "The CJOG report used the agencies' own congressionally mandated FOIA response reports, which we believe is a truer test of actual performance in handling requests."

Several agencies did achieve significant backlog reductions, but overall, the CJOG analysis suggested, the principal factor in bringing down the backlog was a sharp decline in new requests, taking substantial pressure off the agencies. In 2007 the agencies reviewed received the fewest new requests since reporting began in 1998.

The CJOG analysis found reductions in FOIA personnel and spending, fewer information grants and lengthy delays. One area that saw quicker response time was administrative appeals: the majority of agencies responding to such appeals said "no" more quickly.

A PDF file of the complete CJOG study, including a variety of tables showing both full 2007 results and comparisons by reporting categories, can be downloaded here.

The cost of keeping secrets is at a new high — $9.91 billion. That figure for 2007, a 4.6 percent rise over the previous year, is what the federal government spent on classification, according to the Secrecy News analysis of the Information Security Oversight Office's 2007 Report to the President. "The ISOO annual report…presents a unique snapshot of declassification and declassification activity throughout the executive branch, though the data provided are often of uncertain significance and are cited with exaggerated precision," explained Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientist's Project on Government Secrecy, which publishes Secrecy News.

"ISOO reported uneven compliance with basic classification system rules and regulations at several agencies," Aftergood added.

Original classification decisions, or "new secrets" as Aftergood calls them, were up 1 percent, while derivative classification, or information that had previously been classified and was classified in a new form or document, were up 12.5 percent for a total of 23,102,257 classification actions in 2007, he reported.

Read more of the Secrecy News' analysis and the ISOO report online.

Source: National Security Archive President Bush’s executive order for a “citizen-centered” and “results-oriented” Freedom of Information system did improve customer service at federal agencies, but has failed to make consistent progress on backlogs and has not significantly improved compliance with electronic FOIA requirements, according to the Knight Open Government Survey released March 16 by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. “Many of the same old scofflaw agencies are still shirking their responsibilities to the public,” said Tom Blanton, director of the Archive. “I’m reminded of how many psychiatrists it takes to change a light bulb — only one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.”

The order set up Chief FOIA Officers at each of 90 federal agencies and asked for FOIA improvement plans from each agency. The Archive’s Survey, the seventh in a series of unprecedented government-wide audits of FOIA performance, analyzed all the agency improvement plans, sent FOIA requests to all 90 agencies (plus 18 major agency components), and queried agency FOIA Service Centers and public liaison offices to test responsiveness.

Read more ....

The National Freedom of Information Coalition has released a study of the various ways states resolve access to information disputes without litigation. The report,"Mediation Without Litigation," reviews state models such as formal and informal resolutions, and mediation by attorneys general or government-sponsored entities.

"In the end, the effectiveness of any given system depends largely on the political support provided by government as well as state access advocates," Hammitt writes. "Beyond political support, however, these offices are most effective when their employees believe deeply in the right to access."

The complete report, written by Access Reports Editor and Publisher Harry Hammitt, a board member of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, is available on the NFOIC Web site.

Simply stated: "Openness is an American value." So begins a new report on the alarming rise in excessive government secrecy by the People for the American Way Foundation and OpenTheGovernment.org. The report, "Government Secrecy: Decisions Without Democracy 2007," chronicles what it calls an "unprecedented rise in government secrecy." "In the past six years, the basic principle of openness as the underpinning of democracy has been seriously undermined and distrust of government is on the rise," the report states. Read more…

The new edition of "Bright Ideas for Sunshine Week," the annual collection of examples from the prior Sunshine Week, is now online. The collection from Sunshine Week 2006 features a variety of news and opinion from print, broadcast and online outlets, photos from events, creative graphic presentations, examples of student work and, new to this edition, The Big Picture, which shows how several newspapers incorporated Sunshine Week into print and online packages. In addition to showcasing the myriad ways open government was celebrated in 2006, Bright Ideas is designed to be a source of ideas for participation in Sunshine Week 2007, March 11-17.

Also online: "Bright Ideas for Sunshine Week 2006."

The American Society of Newspaper Editors gathered 100 newsroom leaders, national security experts, lawyers and other media and access experts to discuss concerns with the increase in compelled disclosure of confidential sources.

Video from the proceedings is available on the ASNE Web site.

Among the speakers were Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff; House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyners (D-Mich.), who read from a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzalez urging the withdrawal of subpoenas to San Francisco Chronicle investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, both of whom attended the summit; Geoffrey R. Stone, Harry Kalven Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Chicago; and Andy Alexander, Washington bureau chief, Cox Newspapers.

More ….

The Waiting Game: FOIA Performance Hits New Lows.Research by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government showed that the government’s overall FOIA performance was at the lowest point since agency reporting began in 1998. Requests remained heavily backlogged, requesters still had long wait times for a response from many agencies and people seeking records and information remained less likely to get the information they seek than in the past. (Feb. 14, 2007) More...

Commercial Uses of Government Information Outpace Requests by Journalists and All Others: The federal Freedom of Information Act is a critical tool for businesses seeking government information and companies conducting competitive research; an analysis of FOIA use showed that about two-thirds of the requests to 20 departments and agencies were from commercial requesters. The CJOG study also showed FOIA use by the media is considerably less than conventional wisdom. (July 3, 2006) More...

Federal Government Continues to Fall Behind In Responding to FOIA Requests: The federal government continues to fall further behind in getting information to people seeking public records under the Freedom of Information Act. The backlog of requests, a critical indicator of information delays, rose from 20 percent in 2004 to 31 percent in 2005, despite a decline in the volume of requests, according to a CJOG survey of 22 agencies and departments. Had these departments and agencies maintained their 2004 level of processing requests, there would have been no significant backlog. (June 30, 2006) More...

On a special page marking the 40th anniversary of the signing of the federal Freedom of Information Act on July 4, 1966, find links to new usage data, historical documents, news and commentary.

Journalist Judy Woodruff hosts a video history of the Freedom of Information Act. Click here for a .mpg file. Go here for a .mov file.

David Shedden, library director for the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, has developed a comprehensive Freedom of Information-First Amendment bibliography that includes links to relevant sites and articles, as well as a list of books on the subject. The bibliography is available online at the Poynter Institute Web site.

On Sept. 17, 2008, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform's Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives held a hearing on Implementation of the Office of Government Information Services. The OGIS, designated by the OPEN Government Act of 2007, would serve as a Freedom of Information Act ombudsman, ensuring that government agencies properly respond to public requestors. Though the law calls for OGIS to be housed at the National Archives, and allocated $1 million for its operation there, the Bush administration FY2009 budget placed OGIS in the Justice Department, the very agency that defends government decisions to withhold information. "[T]he last thing that those who championed the FOIA reforms in Congress wanted was for Justice to be both the federal government's lawyer and independent mediator. The conflict of interest is inherent and unavoidable," Sunshine in Government coordinator Rick Blum testified. Read Blum's and other hearing testimony on the Subcommittee's Web site.

"The next President could achieve a systematic reduction in government secrecy by directing each agency that classifies information to conduct a detailed public review of its classification policies with the objective of reducing secrecy to the essential minimum and declassifying everything that does not meet the standard for classification," noted Steven Aftergood director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy in a statement Sept. 16, 2008 to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Read more here.

Citing "some good days recently" for the Sunshine community, Associated Press President and CEO Tom Curley said, "After years of playing mostly defense, and mostly getting beat, we've finally been able to get back on offense and score a few points." Speaking to a Sunshine Week 2008 dinner crowd at the National Press Club in Washington, Curley noted, "When a matter of public policy poses a straight-up choice between the public’s rights of access to its government and a government effort to infringe or even narrow those rights, journalists cannot pretend to be disinterested observers." Read the speech here.

Speaking at a 20th anniversary celebration of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, Bill Moyers, now president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, in a speech developed with his colleague Michael Winship, noted, "The country suffers not only when presidents act hastily in secret, but when the press goes along." Read it here.

EXCLUSIVE SUNSHINE WEEK LOGO MERCHANDISE NOW AVAILABLE Show your support for open government during Sunshine Week and all year with Sunshine Week shirts, caps, mugs, mousepads, pins, note cards, stickers and more. Give them to staff, supporters, FOI heroes, or yourself. Product details and ordering information are online.