Today, the DC Circuit court reissued an opinion in Public Citizen v. OMB that rejected the agency’s use of exemptions 2 and 5 of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).  OMB had attempted to withhold information from Public Citizen that detailed which agencies submit materials to Congress without clearance by OMB.  This court case adds an important legal support to the FOIA practice of discretionary disclosure.

Exemption 2 of the FOIA allows agencies to withhold information concerning internal personnel rules and practices while exemption 5 applies to inter- and intra-agency materials that are pre-decisional and deliberative.  However, the DC Circuit found that the records have nothing to do with OMB’s internal practices.  Further, for exemption 5 to apply the records must be both pre-decisional and deliberative which do not apply in this instance.  Therefore, neither exemption can apply to these records in full.

This case is an important one in that it limits the way these specific FOIA exemptions can be used by agencies to withhold information from the public.  Government openness advocates have long argued that these exemptions are applied too broadly by agencies. 

Although the Obama administration has attempted to better define the applicable uses of these exemptions, advocates have not seen a decline in their actual assertions.  The Office of Information Policy at the Justice Department released a memorandum last May that instructed agencies to exercise greater discretion to release information under both of these exemptions if there would be no reasonably foreseeable harm from release.  Far too often, agencies will use exemption 5 to withhold records in their entirety when only part of the information in an entire document might actually fall under that exemption.  Further, agencies usually take vast liberties to apply exemption 2 broadly and withhold information that could inform the public in regard to activities of the government.  Hopefully this case will help push agencies to better comply with executive branch FOIA policy.

Curious about the information government is tracking about your community’s health?  What about data on the wetlands in your area?  Or perhaps the federal contracts going to your community’s businesses?  Well, now is the time to let the government know what you want to see.  They're listening.

All agencies are currently soliciting public input into what federal information to release via Data.gov.  If you know what kinds of information would be useful to you, even in the broadest sense, then you can submit your request directly to the agency.  You can also view other items your fellow citizens have requested.

The best way to submit your ideas is to go to the OpenGov Open Feedback Firehose over at Intelletics.  The Firehose is a catalog of all the portals where you can submit requests to specific agencies.  Simply click on the link to the agency you want speak to, sign in, and leave your comment.  You can also vote on the requests made by others!

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA or Recovery Act). We're going to put up some more substantive posts later, but I thought these graphs in the New York Times really get to the heart of the "did it work" question.

Imagine if, one year ago, Congress had passed a stimulus bill that really worked.

Let’s say this bill had started spending money within a matter of weeks and had rapidly helped the economy. Let’s also imagine it was large enough to have had a huge impact on jobs — employing something like two million people who would otherwise be unemployed right now.

If that had happened, what would the economy look like today?

Well, it would look almost exactly as it does now. Because those nice descriptions of the stimulus that I just gave aren’t hypothetical. They are descriptions of the actual bill.

Despite the nearly 2 million jobs that wouldn't have existed without the act or the additional 2 to 3 percentage points in additional GDP growth, only 6 percent of the public thinks the Recovery Act has already created a substantial number of new jobs, while only 41 percent think it eventually will.

This is probably driven by the current awful unemployment rate, but the enormity of the gulf between ARRA (and economy watchers) and the general public is striking. And this is all despite the fact that Recovery Act spending is the most transparent in history.

Image by Flickr user smcgee used under a Creative Commons license.

Yesterday, a group of organizations, including OMB Watch, submitted concerns with the high-value datasets published on Data.gov in compliance with the requirements of the Open Government Directive (OGD) issued on Dec. 8. The OGD required that agencies submit at least three high value datasets within 45 days through Data.gov.   These groups outlined the major problems with the site and its implementation thus far.  I have summarized these issues below.

Yesterday, a group of organizations, including OMB Watch, submitted concerns with the high-value datasets published on Data.gov in compliance with the requirements of the Open Government Directive (OGD) issued on Dec. 8. The OGD required that agencies submit at least three high value datasets within 45 days through Data.gov.   These groups outlined the major problems with the site and its implementation thus far.  I have summarized these issues below.

Format & Usability

A major concern of the community is that releasing data in specific formats may make it more usable to coders and the tech-savvy, but not to the general public writ large.  If data is solely released in formats such as XML or CSV leaving the majority of the public unable to decipher these raw formats then Data.gov’s attempt to make the government more transparent has failed.    What good is information if we can’t read it?

The solution?  We proposed that the administration strike a balance between releasing data in machine readable formats and presenting the data to the public through web-based interfaces.  Web-based interface can be designed in a user-friendly way that aggregates the raw data for quick and convenient access.

Definition of High Value

The OGD mandated that agencies release three “high-value” datasets on Data.gov.  However, the Sunlight Foundation noted that only 16 of the 58 datasets posted by major agencies were previously unavailable.  The vast majority of released datasets were already online but not in machine readable format.  This meant that the administration only picked the low-hanging fruit in its first data release.  On the other hand, the data was now available in a central location and in a better format.

Still, this leaves open the question of how the government is defining “high value.”  According to the Open Government Directive, high value data is information that can be used to increase agency accountability and responsiveness; improve public knowledge of the agency and its operations; further the core mission of the agency; create economic opportunity; or respond to need and demand as identified through public consultation.  Yet, the agencies do not have to demonstrate how the releases they submit qualify under these categories.  To resolve this issue we expressed the need for such a requirement.  Other things we asked for:  notations that indicate which datasets are already available and unavailable as well as datasets that help hold agencies accountable for their policies and spending decisions.

Data Quality

This third issue mainly centers on the fact that some datasets could not be opened, were missing portions, or missing headers.  Missing headers, of course, means the data cannot be used even by coders.  Moreover, it was discovered that some of the datasets were being quietly removed from the site without public notification.

Here, we stressed the need for a better feedback mechanism than what exists on the site.  We made the point that there needs to be a system to report problems with specific datasets.  Further, we asked that all datasets on Data.gov be directly associated with their code sheets.
Ultimately, this is a great first step in showing the amount of data the agencies are capable of putting out in machine readable format.  Never before have we been able to access so much raw data in one place.  Despite the short deadline for this disclosure, several executive agencies released more than the required three datasets.  The implementation, however, needs to be improved through  creating public facing interfaces, requiring agencies to demonstrate the value of the data, and by providing a means of user feedback.

In order to improve Data.gov and the range of data included on the site, the administration is welcoming comments on its blog, Join the Dialogue. Additionally, Data.gov allows users to rate each dataset for ease of access, usefulness, data utility, and an overall ranking.

To read the group’s arguments and other points of contention in full, see the letter we sent here.  Feel free to give us your feedback.