"The White House is removing a federal regulation that subjects its Office of Administration to the Freedom of Information Act, making official a policy under Presidents Bush and Obama to reject requests for records to that office.....The office handles, among other things, White House record-keeping duties like the archiving of e-mails.....The irony of this being Sunshine Week is not lost on me," said Anne Weismann of the liberal Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW. "It is completely out of step with the president's supposed commitment to transparency," she said. "That is a critical office, especially if you want to know, for example, how the White House is dealing with e-mail." http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...hite-house-foia-regulations-deleted/24844253/ And of course..... "The Obama administration set a new record again for more often than ever censoring government files or outright denying access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press. The government took longer to turn over files when it provided any, said more regularly that it couldn't find documents, and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy. It also acknowledged in nearly 1 in 3 cases that its initial decisions to withhold or censor records were improper under the law - but only when it was challenged." http://www.aol.com/article/2015/03/...ring-government-files/21154727/?ncid=webmail1
I'm all for accountability and transparency but there is important sensitive and classified information that must be held secure when it is preliminary, exploratory, and unfinished. The key paragraphs in the link are: In 2009, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled that the Office of Administration was not subject to the FOIA, "because it performs only operational and administrative tasks in support of the president and his staff and therefore, under our precedent, lacks substantial independent authority." The appeals court ruled that the White House was required to archive the e-mails, but not release them under the FOIA. Instead, White House e-mails must be released under the Presidential Records Act — but not until at least five years after the end of the administration. As with most things, there is a proper balance to be found here. They will move the fulcrum back and forth until the balance point is found.
The Obama administration is setting records as the least transparent administration in history. They have refused more FOIA requests than any other across all departments. This is from a Washington Post article with data to back it up.
They have also received more FOIA requests than any other, by far. The internet makes requesting it simple, but complying with it is much more difficult. Especially unsearchable older data that is in paper files or old microfilm. There has been a flood of such requests in recent years, many of them frivolous and requesting huge amounts of documents. It cost the country $434 million to respond to them in 2014 and takes much more time. I have to deal with this frequently getting access to ordinary Corps of Engineers research data. It used to be a simple request, but Congress started placing more data in categories that require a formal FOIA request and the guys in Vicksburg and New Orleans that have the data have to jump through a lot more hoops before they can send it to me. Public data that I produce for federal and some state agencies, I can no longer share. I must refer people to the federal agency in charge and they must jump through hoops. There is going to have to be a huge and expensive effort to fix this in the future by triaging all government data and documents into: Classified information that no one gets access to without prior clearance, Sensitive and difficult-to-find information that must be applied for under FOIA, Non-sensitive public information that must be made easily available via the internet. It will not be cheap, easy, or quick but the problem will snowball if not addressed.
What about the Bush administration? I think I spoke quite plainly about the United States government, not about any President at all. Congress created the FOIA, not any President. And the proliferation of FOIA requests is not new, it has been increasing ever since it was implemented in 1966. But since you mention Bush, yes his administration received more FOIA requests that any previous administration. And guess what? The next administration, no matter what party is represented, will have even more to deal with. You didn't pay any attention to what I wrote about the real-world problems with FOIA requests, did you? This is more about proliferation of data than about transparency. For any administration.
- It also spent about $28 million on lawyers' fees to keep records secret. -more than ever censored materials it turned over or fully denied access to them, in 250,581 cases or 39 percent of all requests. Sometimes, the government censored only a few words or an employee's phone number, but other times it completely marked out nearly every paragraph on pages. -The White House touted its success under its own analysis. It routinely excludes from its assessment instances when it couldn't find records, a person refused to pay for copies or the request was determined to be improper under the law, and said under this calculation it released all or parts of records in 91 percent of requests - still a record low since President Barack Obama took office using the White House's own math - federal employees last year regularly misapplied the law. In emails that AP obtained from the National Archives and Records Administration about who pays for Michelle Obama's expensive dresses, the agency blacked-out a sentence under part of the law intended to shield personal, private information, such as Social Security numbers, phone numbers or home addresses. But it failed to censor the same passage on a subsequent page. The sentence: "We live in constant fear of upsetting the WH (White House)." -The AP earlier this month sued the State Department under the law to force the release of email correspondence and government documents from Hillary Rodham Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. The government had failed to turn over the files under repeated requests, including one made five years ago and others pending since the summer of 2013. -Under the law, the U.S. is required to move urgent requests from journalists to the front of the line for a speedy answer if records will inform the public concerning an actual or alleged government activity....The CIA, at the center of so many headlines, has denied every such request the last two years. I'm still trying to find some sort of kernel here that supports the idea of transparency from this administration.
Every government agency has missing records, trust me, I deal with them a lot. If someone requests 50,000 pages of documents, they must pay for the photocopies. If they ask for classified material it will not be granted. I can't imagine why you'd would think that these instances should be considered failure to comply with FOIA. An intelligence agency that guards its information carefully. What a shock. Much of their data remains classified, you know, but they do have an online reading room for what is not. And information on how to file and check on your requests. Don't pretend that transparency was crystal clear for all other administrations. Nixon for instance.
So what you are saying is that Obama didn't know what he was taking about when he ran for president. He fell in line with the previous.
