U.S. Government Information
Freedom of Information Act
If the Constitution of the United States has provided a fundamental basis for the information policies of the country, it has been in certain subsequent pieces of legislation that we find the solidification and strengthening of that foundation. Signed into law in 1966 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and amended several times since, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has been such a piece of lawmaking.
While applicable to only one of the three branches of the federal government, the FOIA gives Americans the "right to know about the activities and operations of the federal executive branch" (4). It might be noted that while the FOIA does not apply to the President it does apply to the Executive Office of the President, the 15 departments of the Cabinet, and all of the support agencies and departments of the executive branch. Also worth noting is that the FOIA provides the government with nine circumstances for which it may restrict certain bodies of information from public scrutiny. With that said, the FOIA is still a strong piece of legislation that has shifted the burden of proving information disclosure rights from the citizens of the U.S. to the government itself--where at one time a person might have been faced with the task of proving his need to know certain information held by the government when requesting the government provide it to him, the government must now prove why that person does not have a right to receive that information if it desires to restrict access to it.
There is a formal procedure one must follow to request information from the executive branch using the FOIA, and one may have to do some homework before he submits such a request. He should be aware that it is to be in written form and signed, that part of the written request ascertain his agreement to pay all fees and costs incurred during the processing of the request (e.g. fees for copies and searches), and that a genuine effort be made to send the request to the specific bureau or office that holds the requested information. All sites for each department of the President's Cabinet provide directions for correctly submitting FOIA requests to the various agencies within that department. In almost all of these pages, one will find a reminder of the wide range of information already provided by the department to the public, and the implication in these reminders is that FOIA requests should be of a very specific nature and involve information that is not available elsewhere.
