Good morning, Whitewater
On this date in 1996, President Clinton signed an amendment to the Freedom of Information Act, that required the federal government to place electronic documents online. Much has happened in these last thirteen years.
Among the most important changes, the legislation required the government to supply information in the requested digital format, if possible. Spreadsheets are easier to decipher than thousands of pages of documents, for example.
What’s more, the law also urged the government to publish online as much information as possible. FOIA, first enacted in 1966, now required the government to search its electronic databases to comport with information requests. An “agency shall make reasonable efforts to search for records in electronic form or format, except when such efforts would significantly interfere with the operation of the agency’s automated information system,” the legislation said.
The amendments, like the original act, allow anyone to request information, but have been especially helpful for journalists seeking information on behalf of the general public. News-gathering in the pre-digital days required burning shoe leather, working the phone and poring over reams of paper files. What little internet data was available was largely through Gopher and FTP. Web retrieval was somewhere between minimal and microscopic.
The 1996 amendments changed things a lot. “The 1996 amendments were very forward-thinking and very important,” said Lucy Daglish, executive director of The Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press.
But she cautioned that, notwithstanding the amendments, the sitting president sets the tone of how the Freedom of Information Act will be applied in practice.
That’s true locally, too. Wisconsin has its own Public Records Law, Wis. Stat. §§ 19.31 through 19.39. It’s not just the law, but compliance that matters.
In our schools, it’s Eagle and Spirit Day at Washington School, and the football team faces Evansville.
Here’s today’s almanac:
| Friday, October 2, 2009 | Sunrise | Sunset |
|---|---|---|
| Official Time | 06:53 AM | 06:34 PM |
| Civil Twilight | 06:24 AM | 07:03 PM |
| Tomorrow | 06:54 AM | 06:33 PM |
| Tomorrow will be: | 2 minutes shorter | |
| Amount of sunlight: | 11h 41 m | |
| Amount of daylight: | 12h 39 m | |
| Moon phase: | Waxing Gibbous | |