The National Archives invites you to participate in the Open Government Idea Forum at http://naraopengov.ideascale.com/. This important dialogue will help provide new ideas and direction to the revision of the National Archives’ Open Government Plan.
Whether you’re an archivist, historian, genealogist, National Archives researcher, citizen concerned with records management, policy expert in declassification, or advocate for freedom of information, we need your input and ideas for how we should improve transparency, participation, and collaboration at the National Archives.
The Open Government Forum will run through March 21, 2012. I encourage readers of the NDC Blog to share their ideas on this forum.
Don, Have just read article by AP’s Richard Lardner re a “new category of secret files (March 14 local newspaper)–How will reviewers know when they are seeing information which needs to be protected about “cybersecurity, critical U.S. computer networks, industrial plants, pipelines and more”. Will agencies and industry be obliged to mark it distinctly? What a can of worms this is going to be!
Good luck!
Alan
Alan,
I did some looking into this and it appears that they (DOJ) are trying to work with Congress to reinstate the “High 2” FOIA exemption that was overturned by the Supreme Court last year in the Milner decision. Basically, the Court narrowed the interpretation of the (b)(2) exemption to apply strictly to personnel related matters. In the past, agencies had applied (b) (2) to several internal matters such as systems security, building plans etc. Thanks for the head’s up. I’ll keep following this story in case it does end up impacting declassification.
Don