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I can only imagine the political adds running this time next year...

PROMISES, PROMISES: Little transparency progress

"WASHINGTON – Two years into its pledge to improve government transparency, the Obama administration took action on fewer requests for federal records from citizens, journalists, companies and others last year even as significantly more people asked for information. The administration disclosed at least some of what people wanted at about the same rate as the previous year.

People requested information 544,360 times last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act from the 35 largest agencies, up nearly 41,000 more than the previous year, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of new federal data. But the government responded to nearly 12,400 fewer requests.

The administration refused to release any sought-after materials in more than 1-in-3 information requests, including cases when it couldn't find records, a person refused to pay for copies or the request was determined to be improper under the law. It refused more often to quickly consider information requests about subjects described as urgent or especially newsworthy. And nearly half the agencies that AP examined took longer — weeks more, in some cases — to give out records last year than during the previous year.

The government's responsiveness under the Freedom of Information Act is widely considered a barometer of how transparent federal offices are. The AP's analysis comes a day before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing examining the Obama administration's progress."

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Of the 544,360 FOIA requests in 2010, fully 500,000 were for copies of Barry's birth certificate!

Just to give you some reporting from the front line of this issue. I'm a federal contracting officer. I receive probably five (or so) FOIA requests per year. Usually, the request comes either from a competitor of one of our contractors who is trying to steal their corporate pricing, approach, or other strategy or it comes from a data mining website that provides information to prospective vendors for work as a subcontractor or for new contracts as old ones expire.

Usually the FOIAs we receive are a request for "a copy of the entire contract". In such an instance, the requestor is usually naive about how much effort that would involve (or in one case was simply an angry unsuccessful offeror who was trying to punish us for not selecting them - they were offered and received a full debrief on why they lost prior to this IAW the FAR). My major contract is a half billion dollar IDIQ contract with nearly 500 individual ongoing task orders. Much of the work is classified. Almost all of it contains contractor and/or government proprietary information and pricing.

My usual first reply to a FOIA is that because of classified and proprietary information, a significant portion of the request would need to be redacted. That makes them go away half the time. If they decide they want a redacted copy, then...

I let them know that the entire contract with all task orders and attachments is at least 20,000 pages. Would they like me to do an estimate of the costs involved in reproducing and redacting their request? Then...

They usually reduce their request to a simple statement of vital information, like name of the prime and major subcontractors, period of performance, dollar values, etc. But, some stubborn people insist on the full redacted copy and so we do a cost analysis of the reproduction and redaction which usually ends up in the thousands of dollars range.

I have never had to respond to a FOIA in full. The data miners are happy with the vital info we can provide at no cost and the corporate spies are turned away with extreme prejudice once we tell them how much they'll have to pay to get a bunch of redacted crap that is of no use to them.

Ivytalk wrote:Of the 544,360 FOIA requests in 2010, fully 500,000 were for copies of Barry's birth certificate!

You laugh... but

"Sunlight is the best disinfectantant"

Indeed.