Today I head out on a 45-day road trip, “Access Across America,” to conduct FOI training in newsrooms and for community groups. It should be a blast! As I talk to journalists and citizens each day, I’ll take notes and post tips and thoughts on the Access Across America blog. Check out the site for [...]
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An interesting, if somewhat non-newsworthy, look at the ways in which technology bedevils FOI law, by Advertising Age. I wonder how this writer pitched this story? Nice work getting in, though! While little of this is revelatory, it’s a nice recap.
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One of the most shameful government cover-ups in this country involves the use of non-profit foundations by public universities to hide shenanigans. Push for your legislature to require university foundations to be subject to your public records law. That’s something California is considering since time after time foundations have been found to be slush funds [...]
Filed under: 3. Access law | Tagged: Education | 1 Comment »
ProPublica is creating a cool “Reporting Network Doc Squad” to establish people around the country who can request records from state governments as needed. This is particularly important because five states don’t respond to out-of-state requests (Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas, Georgia and Delaware). These rules that prohibit out-of-state requests are archaic and should be dropped. ProPublica [...]
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Why not make an FOI request from the FBI to see if they have files…on your paper? The St. Louis Post-Dispatch did, and the result was a fascinating pile of FBI records! Here’s a site to find out how to submit a FOIA request for your own FBI file, as well: Get My FBI File, [...]
Filed under: 2. Doc state of mind | Tagged: Everyday life | Leave a Comment »
If you’ve been denied records or data from a government agency on flimsy grounds, request to find out if the agency sells the same data to commercial users for profit. That’s what The Oklahoman and Tulsa World did (see story). They requested a database of state employees, including date of birth and salaries, to identify [...]
Filed under: 6. Overcoming denials | Tagged: Local gov | Leave a Comment »
I see the Mississippi Legislature passed a bill to shorten the amount of time an agency has to respond to a records request, from 14 days to seven days (see story). “Right now it’s 14 days, two weeks; that’s about the longest in the country and frankly in most cases it’s too long to wait,” [...]
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