Celebrating Sunshine Week is off to a good start in the nation’s capitol, but not without some shadows along the way.
Panuccio said that he sent a a memorandum to all agency General Counsels and Chief FOIA Officers stressing that “improving FOIA performance requires the active participation of agency Chief FOIA Officers.” The Department of Justice has not disclosed the memorandum yet.
Here’s else what I saw, heard, and learned so far on Sunshine Week in 2019.
Embedded above is a Twitter thread on Freedom of Information Day thread on Freedom of Information Day, which included an impassioned speech celebrating the press by House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings and encouragement to journalists.
In an age where far too many politicians are attacking the press, it was a powerful benediction from a preacher’s son. The following text is a rough paraphrase of Cummings’ remarks, not an official transcript. You can watch video of the entire event, including his speech, on CSPAN, which is in of itself a great example of government transparency.
200 years from now, people will be reading about this period in history.
They will ask: when you saw the press being suppressed, a White House that blocked info from getting to people’s reps, a President who sent memos to career employees telling them they could not be whistleblowers, they’re going to ask what did you do? What did you do? Did you stand on the sidelines? Did you say it was someone else’s business? Did you write the story? Did you take a moment to write the editorial? Did you become fearful?
I view an attack on our press as an attack on all of us, and I will fight with everything I’ve got. And I want you to understand that I’ve got your back. I am the son of 2 Pentecostal ministers. In my house, a lie was a lie and the truth was the truth. We cannot allow fake information to become the norm. And you are the guardians of our freedom of the press. You are the ones who are in guerrilla warfare trying to get info out.
That’s why it’s so critical for Congress to protect your rights and people throughout the nation to get information through FOIA. People want to hold Trump accountable, but how can you hold him accountable if you don’t have information? If you have a secret meeting with Putin & no one knows about it?
Come on now: We’re better than that. If you block information, it’s impossible to have accountability. FOIA is critical to help the American people understand the decisions being made by their government. It is also crucial to understanding who is making those decisions and how they will affect their daily lives.
Things can always be improved upon. I hope Republicans will work with us in a bipartisan manner. It took us 3 years of hard work, with the help of many, & I thank you, & negotiation, & then with the help of Senator John Cornyn and Senator Leahy, we got it over the finish line. The FOIA Improvement Act is a prime example of how Congress can work together.
This week’s Freedom of Information hearing will have the EPA, Department of the Interior and The Justice Department. I invited The Justice Department because they’re in charge of ensuring compliance with the FOIA. In my opinion, they must do a much, much, much better job. At EPA, FOIA requests sent through political appointees and “Deep 6’ed.” Certain FOIA requests were deliberately delayed. That’s why Congress needs to conduct oversight, to shed a light. Secretary Ross will be coming before House Oversight to testify about how citizenship question was added to the 2020 Census.
As Oversight Chairman, my immediate responsibility is to do this kind of oversight. That work helps us to develop reforms for the future. You are so important. You are more important than you know.
I beg you to tear down any walls that might block you from getting info to the American people that they need to know. Stand up for strong FOIA law. Work with us. Don’t be silent.
I want our grandchildren to know that we stood up for this democracy. That we, all of us, had great respect for the people who created the Constitution. That we decided to be about freedom of the press & getting the information out. We are at a critical moment in our country’s history. I am so glad that you have been called to this moment to be the guardians of our information and the flow of our information.
Embedded below is a tweeted thread from the National Archives Sunshine Week event, including Judge Howell, discussion with federal FOIA ombudsman staff, and a livetweet of Senator Patrick Leahy’s comments. Video of the entire event is embedded above.
The National Archives subsequently wrote about celebrating Sunshine Week on its website.
Senator Cornyn, a former judge and Texas attorney general, also spoke to the value of open government but not posted a transcript yet. He did tweet about his visit, stating that “Government transparency is the cornerstone of democracy. I’m proud to have passed the #FOIA Improvement Act and will continue to push for policies that ensure our government remains accountable to we the people.
I also confirmed that the Justice Department hasn’t ever sanctioned any U.S. government officials or staff for violating FOIA under the amended statute. The fact that sanctions for violating government access laws are almost never applied at any level of government might shed some sunlight on why the state of compliance with public records laws not just in the US government but around the USA.
If FOIA officers and appointees faced fines or even jail time for obstructing disclosures under the law, we might see more of a normative shift towards the “openness by default” described in the FOIA statute. Unfortunately, the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy does not show any inclination to do more than encourage agencies to comply and praise those that do.
Earlier today, the Oversight Committee released a fact sheet that documents various aspects of the Trump administration record of secrecy.
Sunshine Week 2019 may officially begin on March 10, but it’s unofficially kicking off tomorrow with the National Freedom of Information Day Conference at the Newseum in DC.
For those unfamiliar with this annual celebration of open government around the United States, Sunshine Week was founded over a decade ago by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, who now support it with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives,” he wrote.
In 2018, the “information darkness” of the Trump administration led to ignominy, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation’ “Foilies” to the Society for Professional Journalists’ Black Hole Award to the National Security Archives’ Rosemary Awards.
In 2019, transparency and accountability have taken on additional context during the Trump administration, which has continued to be allergic to transparency, rife with conflicts of interest, and hostile to the essential role journalism plays in a democracy. When the President of the United States repeatedly calls journalists “the enemy of the people,” a disinformation virus is weakening our body politic.
Despite the enactment of a historic open government data bill, the state of open government (data) remains divided, at risk, and underfunded in the United States.
After years of delays and democratic regression, the US government released a weak open government plan for the Open Government Partnership that was not responsive to the demands of this moment. The Open Government Partnership’s researchers found backsliding in the USA, confirming what watchdogs have been highlighting daily about this administration since January 2017.
Representative Elijah Cummings, D-Md, and Senators Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, recently sent a stern letter to the Interior Department reprimanding the agency for its efforts to weaken its FOIA regulations and urging it to reconsider the rule change. The proposed rule changes which garnered more than 65,000 comments – include allowing the DOI to preemptively reject what it defines as “unreasonably burdensome” requests, the possibility of imposing a monthly limit to the number of either pages or requests from a single requester the agency will process, and a host of other changes that may make it more difficult to obtain fee waivers and expedited processing.
The context for oversight of open government at the national level for this year, however, is different. 2018 midterm elections delivered a 116th Congress that brought with it a commitment to oversight that was sorely lacking in the last session. A core element of that oversight has been public hearings that hold public officials and corporate executives accountable for their service or services.
That will continue next week, when, as has been the tradition in past years, the U.S. House Oversight Committee will be holding a hearing during Sunshine Week in 2019, considering the Freedom of Information Act and transparency under the Trump administration.
There will be many other Sunshine Week events around DC as well. The Department of Justice’s awards for FOIA officers. The National Archives celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Office of Government Information Services (aka the federal FOIA ombudman) during the day on March 11. That night, there will be a panel discussion on how to obtain and improve coverage of climate data at the National Press Club hosted by its Journalism Institute and Freedom of the Press Committee.
There will be a DC Open Government Summit and a forum on science in the Trump era put on by the Government Accountability Project, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Sunlight Foundation’s Web Integrity Project on the evening of March 12.
Despite the threats to American democracy at the federal level and ongoing challenges to open government in the states and cities, there’s still much to celebrate in 2019.
The free press, independent judiciary, and watchdog organizations have continued to provide transparency when elected officials and civil servants have tried to make decisions in secrecy, shedding light on corruption, fraud, waste, abuse and incompetence.
Their combined efforts to bring in sunshine in government across American civil society have been a bulwark against tyranny and corruption in the United States and around the world. Thank you to everyone who continues to support, defend and extend the public’s right to know in the 21st century.
The arc of open government in United States is long, but perhaps it will bend towards transparency and accountability as 2018 comes to a close, in an unlikely moment in our history. After years of dedicated effort by advocates and bipartisan leadership in both houses of Congress, the Open, Public, Electronic, and Necessary Government Data Act (AKA the OPEN Government Data Act) is about to become law after the United States Senate passed the bill as part of H.R. 4174 on December 19.
We just passed a bill that requires all data the govt collects (that isn’t secret or private) to be machine readable and interoperable. It’s data that taxpayers paid for and they deserve access – weather, traffic, census, budget numbers – it’s your info and you should have it.
This bill requires departments and agencies identified in the Chief Financial Officers Act to submit annually to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Congress a plan for identifying and addressing policy questions relevant to the programs, policies, and regulations of such departments and agencies.
The plan must include: (1) a list of policy-relevant questions for developing evidence to support policymaking, and (2) a list of data for facilitating the use of evidence in policymaking.
The OMB shall consolidate such plans into a unified evidence building plan.
The bill establishes an Interagency Council on Evaluation Policy to assist the OMB in supporting government-wide evaluation activities and policies. The bill defines “evaluation” to mean an assessment using systematic data collection and analysis of one or more programs, policies, and organizations intended to assess their effectiveness and efficiency.
Each department or agency shall designate a Chief Evaluation Officer to coordinate evidence-building activities and an official with statistical expertise to advise on statistical policy, techniques, and procedures.
The OMB shall establish an Advisory Committee on Data for Evidence Building to advise on expanding access to and use of federal data for evidence building.
This bill requires open government data assets to be published as machine-readable data.
Each agency shall: (1) develop and maintain a comprehensive data inventory for all data assets created by or collected by the agency, and (2) designate a Chief Data Officer who shall be responsible for lifecycle data management and other specified functions.
The bill establishes in the OMB a Chief Data Officer Council for establishing government-wide best practices for the use, protection, dissemination, and generation of data and for promoting data sharing agreements among agencies.
While the United States would not be not the first democracy to pass such a law, it would be a welcome advance, codifying many aspects of the open government data policies that have been developed and promulgated in the federal government over the past decade.
How did open government data get into the US Code?
This was no accident of fate or circumstance: This bill, which was previously passed by the House last month, was sponsored by the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. It’s an important element of his legislative legacy, and one that can and should earn praise – unlike other aspects of his time with the gavel.
It’s taken years of advocacy and activism by a broad coalition to get here, including the Sunlight Foundation, the EFF, Business Software Alliance, Center for Data Innovation, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, American Library Association, the R Street Institute, among many others, and bipartisan efforts on both sides of the aisle. Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) co-sponsored the OGDA in the Senate, with 5 others, and former Representative Blake Farenthold (R-TX) cosponsored it in House, with 12 others.
That original bill almost made it into law in 2016, when the Senate passed OGDA by unanimous consent, but the House didn’t move it before the end of the 115th Congress. In September 2017, when it was poised to pass Congress as part of the National Defense Authorization Act., before it was stripped from the final version.
The new bipartisan, bicameral companion legislation was introduced on October 31, 2017 by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) to enact the recommendations contained in the final report from the Commission of Evidenced-Based Policy.
The OGDA was one of the primary legislative priorities for me during my years as a senior analyst and then deputy director at the Sunlight Foundation, along with Freedom of Information Act Reform and Honest Ads Act.
I picked up the transparency baton on OGDA from former Sunlight analyst Matt Rumsey, Sunlight federal policy manager Sean Vitka, OpenGov Foundation founder Seamus Kraft, and Data Coalition founder Hudson Hollister, who drafted the original open data bill, working to make the principle that “public data created with taxpayer dollars should be available to the public in open, machine-readable forms when doing so does not damage privacy or national security” the law.
This is a huge win for public access to public information that every American can and should celebrate today. Special thanks for this victory are due to Christian Hoehner, policy director for the Data Coalition, who did extraordinary yeoman’s work getting this through Congress, Sasha Moss of the R Street Institute, Hollister, Daniel Schuman of Demand Progress, Daniel Castro and Joshua New at the Center for Data Innovation, and Gavin Baker from the American Library Association, some with whom I went to Congress with me to meet with staff over the years and advocated for the bill on and offline.
The passage of this bill won’t mean that the scanned images of spreadsheets that agencies still send in response to FOIA requests will magically go away tomorrow, but journalists, watchdogs and the public can now tell civil servants that they’re now behind the times: open government data is now the default in the USA! Please publish our data on the agency website in a structured format and let the public know.