Administration Moves to Postpone Records Declassification

The Federation of American Scientists blog, Secrecy News, revealed [1]early last week that a revised draft of an executive order on the classification of national security information was circulated by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in mid-November.  Despite consulting with the open government community during the policy making process, the policy is rumored to be an unfortunate step backward.

The executive order deals, in part, with the deadline to declassify historical national security records.  The Obama order would reportedly overturn the standing order created [2]by the Clinton administration and amended [3]by the Bush administration that establishes December 31, 2009 as the deadline for declassification of classified records that are at least 25 years old and that involve multiple agency interests.  Intelligence agencies have found the date particularly burdensome as they are unwilling to forego a review of the records.  Giving into this push back, the administration plans to indefinitely delay the release of these documents.

We still hope for some positive measures to be included in the order.  In particular, a leaked August 2009 draft of the Obama order indicated that a National Declassification Center would be established to facilitate interagency review of historical records.  Further, it would require agencies to train employees to avoid overclassification and establish higher standards of accountability for employees who derivatively classify information.

In early phases of policy development, the administration consulted with the public and open government community.  The process began with a May 27 memorandum issued by President Obama that created an interagency taskforce to look into the problem of overclassification.  The deliberations were open to the public through the use of a blog [4]hosted by the Public Interest Declassification Board.

Apparently, some opinions were ignored or unheard.

I hope this is not a sign of things to come.  The right-to-know community is still waiting for other policy announcements concerning issues it has weighed in on.  The administration also consulted advocates on the forthcoming Open Government Directive and policy on controlled unclassified information.  We shall see whether the administration will heed outside advice by bringing openness to the culture of secrecy in government or continue to make concessions.

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