President Obama issued new orders to make the federal government more responsive to the Freedom of Information Act after signing the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 on Thursday.
The law created a new council comprising agencies’ chief FOIA officers. Obama scheduled its first meeting for July 22 and is asking the new body to “identify and address the biggest difficulties that exist in administering FOIA across government.”
He also asked the committee to establish a policy by which agencies will automatically post online FOIA request responses so that everyone can access the information.
The law itself codifies the Obama administration’s “presumption of openness.”
When Obama took office he instructed the government to adopt a policy toward FOIA requests of “in the face of doubt, openness prevails,” Obama said in 2009.
The administration has “processed more than 4.6 million requests under FOIA, releasing unparalleled numbers of datasets to the public, and making it easier for citizens to access information from their government,” according to the White House.
The law also speeds up request turnaround times, requires the executive branch to create one FOIA “portal” for all agencies to use and forces agencies to release information in electronic formats, among other things.
It was enacted on Thursday, which is the original FOIA law’s 50th anniversary.
“Fortunately, Congress — on a bipartisan basis — has provided the … legislation to codify some of the reforms we’ve already made and to expand more of these reforms so that government is more responsive,” Obama said before signing the law. “I know that people haven’t always been satisfied with the speed with which they’re getting responses and requests. Hopefully this is going to help and be an important initiative for us to continue on the reform path.”
Obama also signed the law enabling Puerto Rico to manage its debt to address its financial crisis.
