[A2k] Study: Most federal agencies fail to use Web for access to records

[Manon Ress]

--
[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
In M.Geist  BNA's Internet Law News (ILN) - 3/13/2007:
quote
MOST U.S. AGENCIES FAIL TO USE WEB FOR ACCESS TO RECORDS
A new study by the National Security Archive found that
federal U.S. agencies have dragged their feet on
implementing a 10-year-old law that requires them to use the
Internet to make government documents easily available. The
report says that the result is the public is blocked from
easier access to information and the cost of answering
information requests is driven up.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/
16886085.htm
end of quote

Here's the article:

Study: Most federal agencies fail to use Web for access to records
Associated Press

Federal agencies have dragged their feet on implementing 10-year-old
law that requires them to use the Internet to make government
documents easily available, a new study says.

The result is the public is blocked from easier access to
information, the report says, and the cost of answering information
requests is driven up.

The study by the National Security Archive, for official release on
Monday, found widespread failure among federal agencies to follow the
Electronic Freedom of Information Act amendments that took effect in
1997. The changes constituted some of the most significant
modernizations of the original 40-year-old law that first guaranteed
citizens the right to government information.

``Federal agencies are flunking the online test and keeping us in the
dark,'' said Thomas Blanton, director of the independent, non-
governmental Washington-based research institute. The study was
funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which focuses
on journalism.

The archive's review of all 91 federal agencies with chief FOIA
officers, along with 58 components of agencies (like the Air Force
within the Department of Defense) that handle more than 500 documents
a year, found:

-- Just 22 percent of federal agencies and components fully followed
the law and posted on the Web all the required categories of
documents (agency opinions and orders; frequently requested records;
policy statements; staff guidance).

-- Just over one-third of agencies and components provided an index
of their records, as required, to help locate documents.

-- Only a quarter of agencies and components provided online forms
for submitting FOIA requests.

Many of the record-related Web links that do exist are wrong or
missing. One FOIA fax number actually rang in the maternity ward of a
military base hospital, Blanton said.

A few agencies bucked the trend and showed the benefits of using the
Internet, particularly the Education Department and the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, the study found.

NASA is a prime example of effective use of the Web, Blanton said.

The agency posts comprehensive guidance on FOIA for visitors, links
all their component FOIA Web sites, and also has posted many
documents on the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster, a tragedy that had
drawn many inquiries for information.

``They don't get FOIA requests on Columbia anymore, because it's up
on the Web,'' Blanton said. If an agency would follow the law, ``it
dramatically lowers the cost for government, not just for FOIA but
for all the handling of records.''

The study singled out as particularly egregious offenders the
Department of Veterans Affairs, one of the departments that gets the
most requests for information; the Department of Defense,
particularly the Air Force; the Interior Department; the Office of
the Director of National Intelligence; and the Small Business
Administration.

The costs of handling FOIA -- estimated at $319 million in 2005 --
could be sharply curtailed if agencies relied more on the Web, since
frequently requested documents would already be public and electronic
records could more easily be shared, Blanton said. Backlogs could be
reduced, too.

An even bigger cost-savings could be found if the government chose
not to make so much material secret in the first place, Blanton said.
That cost was estimated at $7.7 billion in 2005, not including the
CIA, according to a report on the cost of security classification
activities by the Information Security Oversight Office, part of the
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

The failure to follow the law should be seen in a larger context of
the federal government's tendency, exacerbated in the years after the
Sept. 11 attacks, to keep information out of public view, Blanton
said. It would be best to focus on essential information that truly
needs to be secret, and make the rest public, he said.

Blanton summarized that approach as ``high fences around a real small
yard.''

Congress should share some of the blame for the failure of the law
because it did not create any enforcement provisions for the law and
did not vigorously oversee the agencies, he said.

------

On the Web:

National Security Archive: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/index.html

Information Security Oversight Office: http://www.archives.gov/isoo/
reports/2005-cost-report.html


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***
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@keionline.org,
www.cptech.org

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