On Barack Obama's first full day as President, he wrote a memorandum on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which is perhaps the most important tool in implementing openness and accountability in government.  In Obama's memorandum, he wrote that "a democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency," and directed Attorney General Holder to write new FOIA guidelines in order to reaffirm his administration's commitment to open government. 

On March 19, the Department of Justice released Holder's guidelines, as well as a press release stating that there would be training conferences made available to government officials and "interested groups."  Given the amount of work we do involving FOIA, Judicial Watch certainly fell under the category of interested groups, but less than twenty-four hours later, the Office of Information Policy announced that the training sessions would be closed to the public.  Why?  Because, we are led to believe, there wasn't enough room in the auditorium, and in all of Washington, D.C. they simply couldn't find a larger venue.  This claim is simply the latest sign that maybe, just maybe, Obama's administration won't be as transparent as it has claimed.

Even dismissing the incredible irony of closing a conference intended to "establish a new era of open government," one must ask when exactly the oppenness is going to begin.  It certainly hasn't yet.  The day after Obama was elected, his transition team unveiled "change.gov", which restated (in slightly less hopeful wording) all the promises made during the campaign.  One promise that was made was the effort to make the "transition process transparent."  It seemed great, until you noticed that there wasn't a single bit of contact information anywhere, and that change.gov wasn't actually a government website, but a 501 (c) 4 non-profit organization. 

Documents from the General Services Administration showed that Obama's request for a .gov website was initially denied, since government domain names are reserved, not surprisingly, for government agencies.  It was not until after the executive director of the transition team wrote to GSA claiming that "a clear message of CHANGE is required . . . the www.change.gov domain is a critical component of this message" that GSA allowed the .gov domain name.  Given all the effort, and the fact that there is already a government agency set up to handle Presidential Transitions, one must ask why the Obama Administration bothered to create their own website at all. 

Under U.S. law, the Office of the Presidential Transition is subject to FOIA, but private entities (such as 501 (c) 4 organizations) are not.  Since change.gov is a 501 (c) 4, GSA essentially allowed the Transition Team to create a loophole ensuring that Obama's transition records could not be accessed by the public at all.  This is hardly the conduct of a president who is devoted to openness, and after the December arrest of Governor Rod Blagojevich it would not be ridiculous to ask what exactly Obama's transition team was doing at the time.

Obama's administration hasn't become any more open since his Inauguration.  He has placed great importance on FOIA, but his administration has already failed time and time again to provide information to the American people.  What happened to his completely transparent transition process, or his campaign promise to post bills online for the public to see a full five days before signing?  The 1,100 page Economic Stimulus Bill was made public for only thirteen hours before being voted on.  Most recently, a U.S. Court of Appeals decided that the Administrative Office of the President, which formerly complied with FOIA, was no longer subject. 

Since Obama took office and even before, he has frequently stressed the importance of an open and transparent government.  On his campaign website Obama complained that one of the major problems in Washington was that "secrecy dominates government actions."  He criticized the Bush Administration for its secrecy and often spoke about his goal to restore openness and accountability.  But so far, Obama's track record suggests anything but openness.

-Tegan Millspaw

GSA Documents on "change.gov"