Legal Research

FOIA Update...New Act

By Barbara Fullerton

"Last week, President Bush signed the OPEN Government Act into law, updating FOIA to bring greater transparency to a government that, in recent years, has increasingly made its decisions out of public view. "

The OPEN Government Act will improve the FOIA process by:

1. Imposing meaningful deadlines on agencies handling information requests;
2. Establishing a FOIA hotline;
3. Bringing government records held by private contractors into full public view;
4. Creating a FOIA Ombudsman to provide an alternative to costly litigation between FOIA
requestors and federal agencies; and
5. Allowing federal agencies to waive FOIA fees for freelance journalists and bloggers.

GOVTRACK
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s110-2488

THOMAS
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:2:./temp/~c110Oiuq4a::

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:s849:

Full post as published by Lex Scripta on January 08, 2008 (boomark / email).