Future of FOIA
“Freedom of information, like every other freedom, demands constant vigilance...Once this freedom is lost, other freedoms quietly vanish - without even the possibility of effective public protest.”
- Eleanor Roosevelt
Former First Lady of the United States
October 1949
To further enhance the rights of citizens and rights and responsibilities of agencies in the FOIA process, there are a few improvements that could be made to FOIA in the future:
1. Enforce FOIA with a presumption of openness.
"...there's too much classification by the American government. A million people are classifying documents. And they are doing it for illegitimate purposes, they're doing it just as a matter of routine, things that should never have been classified secret, and then it's very hard to get them reviewed."
- Jon Wiener
Professor of U.S. History at University of California, Irvine
March 27, 2014; video interview
"Make clear that FOIA's guiding principle is the presumption of openness and end the ping pong policymaking from administration to administration of moving from a policy of 'where possible disclose' to 'where possible withhold' information..." "The presumption of disclosure also means that agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public. They should not wait for specific requests from the public." |
2. Implement newer FOI regulations.
3. Increase resources for implementing FOIA.
"The biggest problem is allocation of funding to address the handling of FOIA requests. It is problematic to have a 'line item' in a budget to cover FOIA, because of the risk that it will be struck out in future years. On the other hand, lack of resources genuinely can compromise the ability of an agency to efficiently process requests."
- Jane E. Kirtley
Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law
March 26, 2014; email interview
“...the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) to help mediate FOIA disputes and to make recommendations to Congress and to the President on how to improve the FOIA process...I worry that this office does not have the sufficient independence, authority and resources to fully carry-out its work.”
- Senator Patrick Leahy
Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee
Hearing on “Open Government and Freedom of Information: Reinvigorating the Freedom of Information Act for the Digital Age”
March 11, 2014
4. Simplify the FOIA process.
"...agencies [have the responsibility to] act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public..." "The FOIA is not easily used by individuals who do not have extensive background knowledge about the federal bureaucracy, legal training, and the capacity to go to court to resolve disputes." |
5. Lower the use of FOIA exemptions.
“Another impediment to the FOIA process is the growing use of exemptions to withhold information from the public. According to a 2013 Secrecy Report prepared by OpenTheGovernment.org, Federal agencies used FOIA Exemption 5 to withhold information from the public more than 79,000 times in 2012 ─ a 41 percent increase from the previous year.” |
6. Eliminate the Glomar Response.
“The Glomar Response was basically the following: We can neither confirm, nor deny the existence of the information requested, but hypothetically, if such data were to exist the subject matter would be classified and could not be disclosed.” |
7. Enforce time limits.
“...we need...serious enforcement of the time limits. Everything should be released after whatever, 10 years or 20 years, 25 years, whatever the government decides. There are such rules now, but they aren't enforced and too much is withheld for many decades when the justification for it has long expired.”
- Jon Wiener
Professor of U.S. History at University of California, Irvine
March 27, 2014; video interview