1.1: Flagship Initiative - FOIA Dashboard

Develop a Web site that will allow the public to “shine a light” on the government’s compliance with the FOIA.

Other Information:

The Department’s Flagship Open Government Initiative combines the Department’s leadership and policymaking roles in FOIA. Our flagship initiative is the development of a Web site that will allow the public to “shine a light” on the government’s compliance with the FOIA. The FOIA Dashboard will apply the principles of transparency and openness to the administration of the FOIA itself, allowing the public to easily track information about FOIA compliance. The Dashboard will allow the public to generate statistics on FOIA compliance across the government and from year to year. Not only will this visual report card promote transparency, it should also have the effect of encouraging the Department’s FOIA offices – and FOIA offices across the government – to improve their compliance efforts and release as much information to the public under FOIA as possible. Relationship to the Department of Justice’s Mission. As the lead agency responsible for implementation of the FOIA, the Department has a special role in encouraging agency compliance with the FOIA’s mandates. The Department took an initial step last December by releasing a sample of the 2009 Annual FOIA Reports, mandated by 5 U.S.C. § 552(e)(1), in a more accessible format. The FOIA Dashboard takes the next step. Description. The Dashboard will be an interactive Web site containing comprehensive data on FOIA compliance by 92 federal agencies. At present, federal agencies compile and publish this data each year in Annual FOIA Reports, and the Department makes those reports available at a single location on its Web site. For the first time, however, the Dashboard will present the annual reporting data graphically where it can be easily tracked and compared from year to year and agency to agency. The Dashboard will also take this previously available information and present it graphically, in new, easy‐to‐understand, interactive formats. When the Dashboard is fully operational, a user will be able to easily track the number of FOIA requests received by federal agencies during the course of a year, how quickly the agencies handled their requests, whether the agencies granted or denied the requests, and, as the site is developed, how the handling of requests changed from year to year. The user will be able to sort and filter the available data, in order to access only information of interest. The user also will be able to derive basic calculations from the raw data. For example, the user will be able to compare one agency’s FOIA backlog to the government’s total backlog to determine how much one particular agency contributes to the government’s total backlog. The Dashboard will allow the user to download the underlying raw data, as well as print the formatted data. The Dashboard will have an educational component as well. In our experience, the public is often unaware of the nature and substance of the statutory FOIA exemptions that allow the government to withhold information for reasons related to national security, personal privacy and the need to protect witnesses and informants cooperating in law enforcement investigations. The Dashboard will provide a platform to impart a more complete understanding of the FOIA to the public, as well as the careful balances that Congress struck between disclosure and the integrity of certain government operations when it enacted the FOIA in 1966. The FOIA Dashboard will be launched in two key phases. In the first phase, the Department will develop the functionality of the Dashboard with 2009 FOIA data from 25 key executive departments, including DOJ. We estimate this will be completed in September 2010. The second phase, estimated to be completed by March 2011, will involve supplementing this initial data with the 2010 FOIA compliance data from all 92 federal agencies that report it. Transparency and FOIA Operations Fostered by FOIA Dashboard. As President Obama has said, “A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency.” By making the Department, and the government, more transparent, we make it easier for the public to hold the government accountable for its actions. The FOIA Dashboard will make more transparent the job that the government is doing in administering the FOIA. The Dashboard will present data in a way that will make it easier for the public to analyze our FOIA compliance. For example, some agencies respond to a vast majority of their requests very quickly, while others have longer waiting periods and backlogs. Some of these differences are due to the nature of the work of a particular agency, the volume of requests received or budgetary constraints. Regardless of the reason, the Dashboard will illuminate these differences for public evaluation. The Dashboard will provide concrete tools for the public, and the agencies themselves, to judge whether the differences are due to agency‐specific functions or whether they can be minimized. A Dashboard user also will be able to easily compare the degree to which different agencies release records, either in full or in part, or withhold records in response to FOIA requests. As with backlogs, there are valid reasons for the differences between agencies concerning the volume of requests granted in full or in part. For example, some agencies handle more national security or personal privacy protected information and so have less ability to increase their releases as that information is properly – and necessarily – withheld under the FOIA. Giving the public the information that it needs to make these comparisons will be a benefit. The type of scrutiny that the Dashboard will foster is also likely to have a favorable impact on the agencies’ compliance efforts in the future. The Dashboard will create an incentive for each agency to improve its FOIA operations, as improvements can be easily measured and quantified through the Dashboard. As agencies strive to “race to the top” to demonstrate their commitment to openness, the Dashboard will readily reflect the results. Public Participation. The FOIA Dashboard was the product of an extensive public outreach process. Members of the public approached the Department with a proposal to create a FOIA Dashboard, suggesting that the Department could improve FOIA administration government‐wide by empowering the public to evaluate the FOIA compliance data in a more meaningful way. The idea was then submitted to the Department’s open government forum (www.opendoj.ideascale.com), where the public, DOJ employees and other stakeholders had been invited to weigh in with their ideas on making the Department more transparent. The Dashboard quickly became one of the highest‐ranking ideas on the forum. We foresee many opportunities for public participation as we move forward with development of the Dashboard. We also expect to reach out to the public and stakeholders for their input and expertise as the plan evolves. Continued Improvement and Sustainability. Over the next year, we will launch the Dashboard and upload a full set of FOIA compliance data. We expect that the bulk of the work will be completed by March 2011. We will then assess whether there are any functionality or presentation improvements that should be made to the Dashboard, based on the public’s comments and available resources. After that time, we believe that the FOIA Dashboard should be readily sustainable, with updates each February when new Annual FOIA Reports are received.

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Indicator:1

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