From the time since the Freedom of Information Act took effect on July, 4, 1967, it has provided any individual the right to obtain access to federal agency records. The FOIA has been a means to ensure that those who are governed can hold those who govern accountable. It provides
A shift to electronic filing of financial disclosure forms for Virginia state employees and elected officials is impacting the cost of viewing those forms – and not in a good way. What once were freely viewed documents now come with a price tag; for example, while a 2008-2011
On July 1, Canada’s Access to Information Act celebrated its 30th birthday; the legislation was considered groundbreaking at the time of its creation. However, recently Canada has faced criticism for its now outdated access to information policies, as evidenced by Canada’s ranking of 55th out of 93 nations in regards to government transparency,
The Defense Department (DoD) has transferred records regarding the Navy SEAL raid on Osama Bin Laden to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a move which many government transparency advocates are concerned violates the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The CIA has justified the records transfer by claiming the records belonged to
At both the federal and the state and local levels, the government is facing a tricky balancing act as it seeks to meet increasing demand for public information requests with diminishing resources. On the one hand are rising costs of responding to FOIA requests (due to the increased volume and
“An area that I believe holds great promise in increasing the efficiency of agency FOIA processes is the use of litigation software in the FOIA context. Agencies often have to manually review hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of paper and electronic records for both responsiveness and duplication before disclosure
The language in HR 1211, Section C calls for OMB to establish and fund a three year pilot of FOIAonline. HR 1211, which has already been voted out of committee, essentially gives the EPA a blank check to continue to develop their FOIAonline Portal and FOIA Case Processing solution under
When one takes a look at the Federal Freedom of Information Act, (link) it is abundantly clear that the authors of the legislation understood that, when it comes to FOIA, “one size does not fit all”. This becomes especially clear when examining the Act with regards to the instructions for each agency to
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the promoters of FOIAonline would like you to believe that FOIA case processing technology within the Federal government is dysfunctional. Nothing could be further from the truth. FOIAXpress, built and supported by AINS, is the leading FOIA case processing solution used by over 200
Canada’s Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault has been conducting a wide-ranging review of Canada’s federal access to information legislation. These efforts follow Canada’s recently poor ranking for right-to-know legislation across the globe conducted by the Centre for Law and Democracy. In 2011, Canada’s standing was 40th of 89 countries; in
