Open Government Act bills include FOIA reforms
Posted by Jacque on September 5th, 2007
Among the bills needing to be reconciled in the current Congressional session are two versions of the Open Government Act, intended to reform the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The Senate recently passed a bill, and in March, the House passed a related bill (H.R. 1309), the Freedom of Information Amendments Act of 2007, the House companion to the OPEN Government Act.
Library Journal has a story about the law that will “mandate tracking numbers for FOIA requests that take longer than ten days to process so they will no longer fall through the cracks, require agencies to report more accurately to Congress on their FOIA programs, create a new ombuds office at the National Archives to mediate conflicts between agencies and requesters, clarify the purpose of FOIA to encourage dissemination of government information, and provide incentives to agencies to avoid litigation and processing delays,” according to a statement released by the National Security Archive (NSA), an independent research institute located at George Washington University.
