Washington’s culture of secrecy remains mostly intact
In its first year, the Obama administration vowed an increase in transparency across government, including through the Freedom of Information Act; the proactive release of documents; and the establishment of a new agency to declassify more than 370 million pages of archived material.
Three years later, new evidence suggests that administration officials have struggled to overturn the long-standing culture of secrecy in Washington. Some of these high-profile transparency measures have stalled, and by some measures the government is keeping more secrets than before.
Media organizations and individuals requesting information under FOIA last year were less likely to receive the material than in 2010 at 10 of the 15 Cabinet-level departments, according to an analysis of annual reports of government agencies by The Washington Post.
The federal government was more likely last year than in 2010 to use the acts exemptions to refuse information. And the government overall had a bigger backlog of requests at the end of 2011 than at the start, due largely to 30,000 more pending requests to the Department of Homeland Security.
Full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-administration-struggles-to-live-up-to-its-transparency-promise-post-analysis-shows/2012/08/03/71172462-dcae-11e1-9974-5c975ae4810f_singlePage.html