Gray skies departed the nation's capital this week just in time for Sunshine Week, an annual week long effort to promote open government and freedom of information led by the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based good government advocacy group.

Not coincidentally, the White House issued a memo Tuesday encouraging agencies to speed up their processing of freedom of information requests. The memo, from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and White House Counsel Bob Bauer, told agencies to "update all FOIA guidance and training materials to include the principles articulated in the President's Memorandum," and "assess whether you are devoting adequate resources to responding to FOIA requests promptly and cooperatively."

The memo came just a day after a Sunshine-inspired report from the National Security Archive at George Washington University found that only a minority of federal agencies have responded to 2009 directives from President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to reform their FOIA practices.

Congress is on a transparency kick, too. Rep. Steve Isreal, D-N.Y., introduced a new bill called the Public Online Information Act, intended to increase transparency and emphasize the online availability and searchability of executive branch documents.  

The bill has the support of the Sunlight Foundation. "With all of the federal, state, municipal level governments starting to release vast amounts of useful information about every aspect of our nation, it's important that it be written in law that all this info has to be made available online," Sunlight Foundation Executive Director Ellen Miller told Capital News Connection.

In addition, the House Committee on Government Oversight and Government reform subcomittee on information policy, census and national archives will hold a hearing on March 18 on current FOIA trends.

In the Senate, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, proposed legislation that would create an advisory panel to investigate the unaddressed and rapidly mounting freedom of information requests at federal agencies. The panel would also make recommendations to Congress on improvements to the process, reports Federal Eye. The bill, called the Faster FOIA Act, was first introduced in 2005.

In a letter from Leahy to Obama, the senator outlined just how severe the problem has become: "According to the Department of Justice's Freedom of Information Act Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2009, the Department had a backlog of almost 5,000 FOIA requests at the end of 2009. The Department of Homeland Security's report for the same period shows a backlog of 18,918 FOIA requests. These mounting FOIA backlogs are simply unacceptable."

For more:
- see the Sunshine Week website
- read a White House Blog entry on Sunshine Week by Norm Eisen, special counsel for ethics and government reform
- read the Washington Post: Federal Eye item
- see the Capital News Connection post
- see the press release on the Leahy, Cornyn legislation

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