Monday, December 14, 2009

Department Issues FOIA Annual Report in More Accessible Format as Part of the President’s Initiative on Transparency and Open Government
"As part of President Obama’s initiative on Transparency and Open Government, the Department of Justice is setting a transparency precedent for the rest of government by releasing on its Web site, the Department of Justice’s Fiscal Year 2008 Annual Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Report in a more publicly accessible format.

At the same time, the department is releasing, in this machine-readable format, 19 other agency annual FOIA reports from a sampling of other federal agencies, making a total release of 20 distinct data sets. As a result of the new format, members of the public, including public interest organizations, scholars, and the media, will be able to more easily track FOIA performance.

The department announced today’s initiative in response to the Open Government Directive issued by the White House yesterday.

The Directive directs all federal agencies to make their annual FOIA reports available in this machine-readable format starting with Fiscal Year 2009. The department in turn will make all of the machine-readable reports available in one location on the department’s Web site (www.justice.gov) as well on the Data.gov Web site..."

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