Today, the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) released its 2009 Report to the President. The report details agency efforts to classify and declassify government information.
The news is mixed: the number of original classification authorities — individuals designated with the authority to classify information — is declining, which should reduce the number of arbitrary classification decisions and help tighten up the overall process. The total number of classification decisions is also declining.
On the other hand, derivative classification (continued protection of documents) dramatically increased nearly 150%. That increase, however, was the result of new guidance regarding the counting of classification actions according to the report.
Declassification of protected information is holding steady.
The Army, Department of State, Department of Justice, the Office of the President, and Department of Defense are winning the classification race. Across the federal government, declassification is plodding along with over 50% of pages reviewed being declassified. However, the CIA is still lagging behind, only declassifying 13% of the pages it reviewed.
ISOO is doing a nice job overseeing the system, but we have yet to see the real cultural shift necessary for federal agencies to open up. A government insider told POGO that the report highlights the need to "get back to the basics" when considering classification regulations, training, and oversight and the need to treat classification as "more than just another administrative/bureaucratic exercise."
President Obama is trying hard to improve public access to government information (through memos on controlled unclassified information (CUI) and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Open Government Directive, Dashboards, etc.), but it's going to take a long time for this administration to adjust the thinking of government officials and contractors who create and possess government information.
Find a graph from the report showing a yearly comparison of pages reviewed vs. pages declassified below the jump:
-- Scott Amey
Comments