One of the first things President Obama did upon taking office was to release a memorandum (.pdf; 44Kb) ordering US federal agencies to reverse course and once again default to transparency:
“All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA [Freedom of Information Act], and to usher in a new era of open government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.”
This is a complete reversal of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft’s direction to disclose information only if it couldn’t be withheld. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Marcia Hoffman writes that Obama’s memorandum “doesn’t explicitly reverse that [Ashcroft’s] policy, but directs the incoming attorney general to issue new FOIA guidelines to agencies ‘reaffirming the commitment to accountability and transparency.’”
Obama also issued an executive order (.pdf; 52Kb) restoring transparency to the Presidential Records Act and another memorandum (.pdf; 64Kb) outlining the administration’s policy on transparency and open government.
“I’m pretty damn pleased that the issue of transparency in government is such a high priority for the new administration,” Sunlight Foundation director Ellen Miller told the Washington Post‘s Ed O’Keefe. Miller suggests the Obama administration redefine the definition of “public information” to “mean that government information is not public until it is posted online in an easy-to-download format.”
On his second day in office, President Obama signed another series of executive orders ending the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) secret prisons outside the US, banning torture, and closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center within a year.
Dang, if this keeps up I may become an Obama convert.
Image credit: Barack Obama campaign.
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