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1.
FOIA Libraries are the repositories for many documents released under the FOIA1 (Freedom of Information Act), i.e., “responsive documents,” by federal agencies and their sub agencies. Awareness of search terminology for FOIA Libraries or electronic reading rooms can assist the public and researchers to locate publicly available government information, including responsive documents. Responsive documents are the responses to FOIA requests that can be posted (in full or with redactions) by federal agencies. FOIA responses may not be easily findable by major web search engines. The goal of this article is to educate readers about government and non-government FOIA resources and declassified document repositories for discovery. It is important for researchers, journalists and citizens to use “FOIA Libraries,” “Electronic Reading Room,” or “FOIA tag” to search for documents concerning government activities and operations that are released under the FOIA on the web. In addition to aiding in the research process, access to responsive documents information furthers democratic goals of transparency and supports findability of government information by the public.  相似文献   

2.
Replacing the ineffective Federal Reports Act of 1942, the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 (PRA) was enacted largely to relieve the public of the mounting information collection and reporting requirements of the federal government. It also promoted coordinated information management activities on a governmentwide basis by the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and prescribed information management responsibilities for the executive agencies. The management focus of the PRA was sharpened with the 1986 amendments which refined the concept of “information resources management” (IRM), defined as “the planning, budgeting, organizing, directing, training, promoting, controlling, and management activities associated with the burden, collection, creation, use, and dissemination of information by agencies, and includes the management of information and related resources such as automatic data processing equipment.” This key term and its subset concepts received further definition and explanation in the PRA of 1995, making IRM a tool for managing the contribution of information activities to program performance, and for managing related resources, such as personnel, equipment, funds, and technology. The PRA currently authorizes appropriations for its administration by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), located within OMB, through FY2001 (44 U.S.C. 3520). Reauthorization of OIRA appropriations provides an opportunity to upgrade the PRA’s provisions and to address prevailing government information management issues.  相似文献   

3.
In many democratic states political rhetoric gives weight to increasing public participation in and understanding of the political process; (re)-establishing public trust in government decision making; increasing transparency, openness, and accountability of public authorities; and, ultimately, improving government decision-making on behalf of citizens. Access to the public record and freedom of information (FOI) are mechanisms which help to facilitate the accountability of public authorities. Many jurisdictions have introduced legislation related to these mechanisms, and the UK government is no exception with its enactment of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 2000. University College London (UCL) ran a research project over 12 months in 2008–2009, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. The research project examined what the impact of the UK FOIA had been on records management services in public authorities, especially local government. This article reports on some of the findings of the study. It considers how FOI compliance and records management functions are organized in local government and the role of information governance which is emerging as an umbrella for such functions. It draws some conclusions about the contributions that records management services make to the ability of local authorities to comply with the FOIA and identifies some ways in which user experience may be affected by the management of records.  相似文献   

4.
Federal open records laws, executive orders on national security classification, and similar policy instruments in the states require that most records at government agencies be available to the public upon request—subject to exemptions which may entail review. Traditionally, this review has been accomplished by redaction (purging) of hardcopy. Resource limitations and increases in the number of requests demand a rethinking of the process. Offices are experimenting with optical scanning, onscreen purging, and online dissemination. Statutory and common law trends may soon require disclosure of database reports in electronic form, when so requested, rather than printouts. The dissemination of manipulable data of commercial value requires a rationale broader than the “citizenship rights” that justified the Freedom of Information Act. Online publication of agency-controlled records also demands careful planning of information systems and public networks. The issues discussed in this article are central to the establishment of an adequate policy for electronic freedom of information.  相似文献   

5.
The UK Parliament passed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in November 2000 after 3 years of government White Papers, consultation papers, and various Bills. The author served as special adviser to the House of Commons Select Committee on Public Administration which oversaw the Government proposals for legislation and the progress of the Bill into the House of Commons. The FOIA introduced pro-active publication of information via Publication Schemes, which were introduced on a staggered basis across the public sector and on January 1, 2005, rights of individual access were granted to individuals. The Act covers well over 100,000 public authorities in the UK and includes both Houses of Parliament. There is a power to add private bodies to the Act's coverage. The Act covers UK, English, Welsh, and Northern Irish public authorities. Scotland has its own FOIA which was enacted by the Scottish Parliament in 2002. The paper will examine the operation of the UK legislation and the role of the Information Commissioner and the Information Tribunal which deal with complaints of refusal and appeals respectively. The jurisprudence has been voluminous and now the English courts are beginning to hear appeals from the tribunal. The article will examine the major trends of the legislation and the problems presented by the legislation. The Government has already issued vetoes under the Act overriding the Commissioner's decision to grant access to the Cabinet papers relating to the Cabinet discussion on entering into war with Iraq and then on devolution of power to Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales. The decisions to open up the files on MPs expenses have caused one of the major constitutional crises in the UK in the last 75 years. As well as examining the way the Act has been interpreted, the author will essay some preliminary analyses of the impact of the Act on the realization of government objectives in passing the Act. The FOIA does sit alongside other legislation allowing access to personal files and access to environmental information and the whole information debate is set in the context of heightened sensitivity and secrecy in time of the war on terror and the state's increasing capacity to demand, store, and share information. The UK experience of the information debate will be examined.  相似文献   

6.
7.
For the Federal government of the United States, freedom of information policy is expressed in statutory law — the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), enacted in 1966, being the first such expression in this regard. Other transparency laws would follow. The FOIA, however, was legislated in the face of considerable opposition by the executive branch. No department or agency supported the legislation, and the President signed it into law with no small amount of reluctance. This climate of opinion resulted in a hostile environment for the initial administration of the statute. To maintain faithful administration of the FOIA and to preserve its purpose, congressional committees found it necessary to conduct vigorous oversight of its implementation and, on occasion, to take remedial action by amending its provisions. Those amendments are reviewed here, the most recent development occurring in the closing days of 2007. Related legislative activities during the 110th Congress (2007–2008) are also examined, as well.  相似文献   

8.
Somewhere in the vicinity of 80 percent of all governmental information has some “geographic” element, and the vast majority is called “geospatial” because of the nature of describing spatial phenomena of the earth. Geospatial information has been increasing steadily in popularity and use since the advent of geographic information systems in the 1960s. From the early 1990s until the present, research libraries have seen an increase in the availability of geospatial information, and they have also seen a substantial change in the services provided to support the needs of clients seeking that information. However, recent events have altered the “access landscape.” September 11, 2001, and subsequent events, caused many policy shifts to take place as to how, or whether, access to governmental geospatial information should be granted. This paper explores those policy developments with the goal of prognosticating on the future of access to governmental geospatial information.  相似文献   

9.
This article is a preliminary analysis of the first few years of the Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act of 1988 (CMPPA). The act requires Federal agencies to establish Data Integrity Boards (DIBs) with responsibility to approve written agreements for computer matches in which their agencies are involved. Information for this analysis was collected from the annual reports on computer matching submitted by agencies to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for 1990 and 1991 and from 108 matching agreements. The secretaries of several DIBs were also interviewed. The effectiveness of DIBs and matching agreements are analyzed using McCubbins and Schwartz's distinction between “police-patrol” and “fire- alarm” oversight. The article concludes that more active and direct oversight, which would occur through an independent data protection or privacy board, is necessary.  相似文献   

10.
Part of the promise of electronic government (e-government) is its ability to transform the delivery of information services and products from government to users. E-government allows federal agencies to supplement and even supplant private sector roles intermediating between government agencies and users, creating unintended consequences in terms of policy, theory, and practice. The problem is called “channel conflict” in the marketing literature, and the typical response is called distribution channel management (DCM). After reviewing the literatures of e-government, information policy, and DCM, the paper explores differing DCM philosophies of two federal agencies: the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Census Bureau. An examination of these two DCM programs provides insights on how federal agencies may be able to manage their various channels for e-government offerings despite tensions in the current legal and policy context. The paper concludes by using DCM literature to help frame options for dealing with these tensions.  相似文献   

11.
This paper demonstrates the divergent requestor privacy policies of professional librarians and the administration of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and urges the federal government to adhere to librarian ethics in order to protect FOIA requestors. Section 1 of the paper provides information about the origins and purpose of the FOIA. Section 2 offers an overview of the philosophical and historical origins of library patron privacy ethics, discussing both the ethical basis for patron privacy and actual instances where library records have been sought for government surveillance of private citizens. Section 3 describes the state library laws that protect library requestors, as well as federal laws that protect non-FOIA requestor privacy rights, including the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), which protects video rental records. Section 4 of the paper warns that, in the digital era, it is more important than ever to safeguard personal information like that contained in FOIA requests to prevent the stifling of information seeking activities in the United States. By modifying laws tomeet the needs of the “information age,” the United States government can embrace and utilize the ethical standards that are at the foundation of librarianship, and protect the principle that information should be free and available to the American populace.  相似文献   

12.
Transparency is popularly believed to enhance the public's trust in government, yet experimental studies have found mixed results. One explanation is that public trust may respond more positively to a kind of “latent transparency” in which citizens highly value the mere potential for open access to government information, even if they may have more negative reactions when presented with the particular content of actual government information, documents, or data. To test this hypothesis, we designed two survey experiments in which samples of US adults were primed with general information about the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or the existence of open government data.Compared to controls, we find that awareness of FOIA rights and requirements (latent transparency) tended to be unrelated, or even slightly negatively related, to trust of government agencies, contrary to our expectations. Our findings, combined with prior evidence, suggest that—even in the case of latent transparency—the popular belief in transparency's positive effects on citizen trust needs a more critical examination. Implications for the theory and practice of transparency are discussed.  相似文献   

13.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has facilitated the release of large amounts of government information that has been of great value to researchers, journalists, and other interested parties. The fraction of this information released in electronic format has been growing as has its volume. While offering great potential for research, large amounts of data disgorged from government information systems can pose challenges to human interpretation and knowledge extraction. Using the Office of the Secretary of Defense/Joint Staff Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Logs for 2007–2009, this research identifies (1) a process for finding relationships between the FOIA requests through keywords extracted from Wikipedia and (2) a technique for visualizing these relationships in order to provide context and improve understanding when working with born-digital government data.  相似文献   

14.
Recently, the Korean government instituted a reform in its archives with the goal of increasing transparency in government and meeting the challenges of the new digital environment in records management. President Roh's administration focused on a “process and system” reform through a shift from paper-based records management to electronic records management. The E-jiwon task management system of the Office of the President, invented by President Roh himself, served as the archetype for the reform. This study explores and critiques the administration's choice of a “process and system” reform over institutional reform, examines the legal framework used to enact the reform and its shortcomings, and analyzes the benefits and deficiencies of the E-jiwon as a tool for democracy in the archives. It concludes that while the new digital environment can assist in promoting government transparency, technological change by itself is inadequate; ultimately, institutional change is necessary for true reform.  相似文献   

15.
The unique three-way partnership formed by the University of Illinois at Chicago’s federal depository library, the U.S. State Department, and the Government Printing Office (GPO) to deliver and preserve foreign policy information through servers housed at the University’s library offers some critical insights into the assumptions and policies of the GPO’s Federal Depository Library Program. Ultimately, the Internet’s explosive growth, combined with powerful graphical interfaces of the major Web browsers, undermines several recently enacted laws that attempt to standardize (or centralize) effective information resource management within the federal government. Not only has GPO steadily lost political and economic support over the last decade from both legislative and executive leaders for its production and distribution programs, many agencies now consider their “.gov Webspaces” the natural successors to the GPO and its depository library program. As a result, a new model of government information distribution is being forged within the highly decentralized and interactive environment of the World Wide Web.  相似文献   

16.
Much of information policy is focused on establishing the parameters of information access—ensuring or limiting access to certain types of information. Given how central information access is to virtually every aspect of society, policy can be seen as one of the most significant forces influencing the information society. Recent events, however, have fueled changes in the ways that some governments use policy to shape access, none more significantly than the United States. This paper examines the meanings of and relationships between policy and access, as well as their key roles in society and democratic participation. Following an examination of the historical and social impacts of policies about access, the article analyzes the perspectives of the Bush administration on how policy should shape information access as an illustration of the relationships between policy and access. The paper examines the issues raised by the Bush administration’s views on access and policy and the implications of their policies for the United States, for the global information society, and for research related to information. Ultimately, the paper raises questions about the extent to which information policies about access can be used for overtly political purposes, what might be described as “information politics,” without significantly altering the meaning of information access in a society.  相似文献   

17.
The National Technical Information Service’s development of the FedWorld Internet site, the Library of Congress’s development of THOMAS, and the Government Printing Office’s development of CBDnet illustrate the many forces impacting federal government information dissemination in the 1990s. These forces include budgeting, congressional inconsistency, technology, political agendas, and competition. While information dissemination policy discussion and legislation, including the American Technology Preeminence Act of 1991 (the foundation for FedWorld) and the Government Printing Office Electronic Information Access Enhancement Act of 1993 (the foundation for GPO Access) aim to provide comprehensiveness and single point access to government information, the actual products developed show little coordination or cooperation among agencies. The products are agency driven, and provide multiple points of access. This highly decentralized information reality reflects the decentralized nature of the federal government itself. The reality is removed, however, from the goals of a singularly consistent federal government information dissemination policy.  相似文献   

18.
Government secrecy has a long history in the American federal experience. Several kinds of government secrecy policy are reviewed here, beginning with their origins, or “policy depths,” and extending to their most recent expressions or “dimensions.” It is a rich history which, in this brief overview, is explored only in terms of its highlights, but offers, nonetheless, a roadmap for pursuing research in this area. It concludes with the observation that, in a democracy, representatives of the citizenry, whether elected or appointed, may momentarily cloak their decisionmaking and their policies in secrecy for the good of the nation—to protect it from enemies and to assure its survival. Those representatives must remember that the secrecy they impose is only momentary and that the shrouded decisions and policies they make, once made known to the citizenry, must be acceptable to them. The citizenry, in turn, accept such secrecy only in limited instances and on a momentary basis in order to have the confidence that their representatives are making decisions and policies acceptable to them. A government failing to honor these arrangements may well be regarded as one “not worth the cost of preservation.”  相似文献   

19.
As security and safety requirements were not considered during the creation of networks, there is a growing number of threats for individuals, enterprises, government agencies and organizations. This paper reviews these threats and the difficulties of dealing with them now. The Internet, as a consequence, is hardly adequate for processing sensitive information, because it can be protected neither by technology nor by law. In this situation, future “information societies” will be more risk-oriented than today: individual rights will be less significant and traditional legal instruments will need to be adapted to different sets of values.  相似文献   

20.
This article examines Executive agency fee waiver guidelines for public interest requesters, including scholars, the media, and public interest groups, within the larger context of F.O.I.A.'s costs and benefits to the public. Information transmitted to the public by these requesters enhances citizen oversight of government activities and assists Congress in formulating public policy. However, arbitrary interpretation of the statute's fee waiver provision and the lack of standard and consistent fee waiver guidelines clearly inhibit use of the Act by public interest requesters. Continuing efforts by some Members of Congress and Executive agency personnel to further limit certain types of information available under the F.O.I. A. prompted renewed consideration of the economic aspects of Federal information policy in general and, in particular, the Freedom of Information Act.  相似文献   

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