Bloomberg reports today that two lawmakers in the U.S. House plan to release a draft bill that would create a single portal for federal records requests.

According to draft legislation obtained by Bloomberg, the bill would put the burden on the fedreal government to prove why information should be withheld if requested under the Freedom of Informaiton Act. 

“This bill strengthens FOIA, our most important open government law, and makes clear that the government should operate with a presumption of openness and not one of secrecy,” sponsor Elijah Cummings of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said in ...

The Arlington Gazette Packet reports that public records in Arlington come at a high price compared to neighboring areas in northern Virginia. Throughout Virginia, access to open records remains spotty. The State Integrity project, which ranks states based on their level of transparency, placed Virginia 47 and gave it a failing grade. Now, Michael Lee Pope reports, open government advocates are claiming Arlington's costly request system serve as an added barrier to public access.

"Want a booking photo in a high profile case? Get ready to hand over $24," Pope writes. "Want to see a copy of a report ...

The FOIA Project has documented more evidence of what its staff calls apparent failure of the Obama administration to fulfill transparency promises, and an upcoming expansion of the project could be a step toward establishing definitive evidence regarding the administration's level of transparency.  

At the end of December, the DocumentCloud-powered venture from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University reported that there were more court complaints asking federal judges to force FOIA decisions under Obama’s first term than under the last term of his predecessor, President Bush. Over the last two years Bush’s second ...

A federal court in Manhattan yesterday dismissed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit involving both The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union, who each sued the United States Department of Justice over records regarding the targeted drone killing of U.S. citizens Anwar Al-Awlaki and Samir Khan and Al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son Abdulrahman in the fall of 2012. The records in question included a memorandum from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which outlines the legal justifications for the killings.

ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer said in a release on the ACLU website: “This ...

This past week, journalists on the NICAR Listserv began discussing the most outrageous price quotes they’d received for open records requests.

Canadian journalist David Weisz started the thread as research for a presentation he was giving to the Information Resource Management Association of Canada on the state of data journalism.

"Having filed ATI requests myself and hearing the horror stories of other journalists, I was curious to hear just how outrageous they got," Weisz wrote via email.

The responses poured in, and the journalists on the listerv agreed to let us share them on the blog. Here's a ...