By DANA LIEBELSON
The Obama Administration has made some positive changes towards an open government this year, but the national security bureaucracy continues to hinder progress, according to a report released today.
The 2011 Secrecy Report was released by OpenTheGovernment.org, a coalition of more than 80 groups (including POGO) advocating for a more open and accountable government. According to the report, some of the Obama Administration’s promises of transparency are paying off—but certain national security agencies are ignoring the open government agenda.
Some of the good news highlighted in the report centers on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The Administration has been “rebuilding openness” and FOIA performance has improved from previous years. Compared to 2009, FOIA backlogs in 2010 were reduced by 10 percent.
Other moves the Obama Administration has made towards transparency include releasing newly declassified details about the U.S. nuclear stockpile, updating sites like FederalReporting.gov and USAspending.gov, and refusing to assert Executive Privilege to deny congressional requests for information (Obama is the first president in OpenTheGovernment.org’s records not to do so.)
However, according to the report, the national security bureaucracy has not fully embraced the Obama Administration’s open government efforts. The authors say, “two years after the effective date of the President’s Executive Order on Classified National Security Information, only a few agencies are taking the required Fundamental Classification Guidance Review process very seriously, with others ignoring or deferring it.”
Additionally, the amount of classified material created by the government annually has stayed well above that created prior to 2000. In the past year alone, expenditures to maintain secrecy have increased 14 percent.
Citing the Administration’s prosecutions of Thomas Drake, Thomas Tamm, and three new prosecutions involving the alleged disclosure of classified information, the report also points to whistleblower issues as an area in which the Administration has failed to implement a new direction, or has even taken steps to make itself less accountable to the American public.
The report points to an Associated Press study that found that the Central Intelligence Agency and Securities and Exchange Commission rejected information requests more than half the time during 2010.
Find a statement by OpenTheGovernment.org here.
Dana Liebelson is POGO’s Beth Daley Impact Fellow.
Photo via Flickr user AN HONORABLE GERMAN.
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