Home > Blog > Transparency: changing federal agencies’ culture is the key

While the administration has been touting its success in bringing transparency to the executive branch, especially through the use of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), we at CREW have had a very different experience. We have yet to see an increase in discretionary releases, still face the same resistance at the agency level, and overall have not experienced the promised change.

So today CREW, along with two very experienced FOIA litigators, Scott Hodes and Dan Alcorn — and David Sobel from the Electronic Frontier Foundation — sent this letter to White House Special Counsel Norm Eisen and Cass Sunstein, administrator of OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory affairs. Our letter requests a meeting to discuss with them our proposals for transforming the FOIA into a statute that actually delivers on its promise of openness in government.

As our letter points out, changing federal agencies’ culture is really the key to change. The prevailing mindset at agencies is that the FOIA is most safely administered under a presumption of non-disclosure. In this way, agencies avoid the embarrassment and discomfort that often results from disclosure of records that identify agency problems and poor administration.

Our suggested reforms include better use of technology in administering the FOIA, such as allowing FOIA requests to be filed on-line and providing on-line tracking so FOIA requesters can easily determine the status of their requests. To address the dismal state of agency FOIA regulations — many of which conflict directly with the FOIA — we recommend OMB issue model regulations for all agencies to consider and implement. Despite the attorney general’s March 2009 FOIA guidance directing agencies to consider discretionary releases, especially of Exemption 5 material (which includes documents subject to privilege in civil discovery) that is not happening.

We propose additional guidance that would require agencies to balance the public interest in disclosure against the harms Exemption 5 is intended to protect against. And we recommend that all agencies disclose certain identifiable data sets on an ongoing and voluntary basis, such as daily schedules for agency heads.

Many of our proposals are not new; we have made them again and again to various people within the Obama administration. We share the president’s commitment to a truly transparent and accountable government. But in our collective wisdom, focusing so intently on developing metrics to measure agency change — the ongoing effort of the administration — ignores a critical reality: measuring change presupposes change is happening in the first place.