New numbers are in. Agencies’ Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) records show that agencies have indeed made disclosure through FOIA a priority this past year. According to the latest annual reports collected by the Justice Department, the use of FOIA exemptions by the fourteen cabinet departments decreased over the last year. Agencies are sharing more and withholding less.
Agencies also report that they relied on exemptions 2 and 5—those most within their discretion—far less frequently over the past year, down 20 percent and 26 percent respectively. And of all FOIA requests processed for the possible applicability of exemptions across all agencies to which FOIA applies, the government made partial or full disclosures about 93 percent of the time; in only some 7 percent of those cases did agencies withhold all requested documents. What’s more, in about 56 percent of the cases, the agency made a full disclosure, up a full 6 percent over last year. Agencies reduced their FOIA backlogs as well—the cabinet agencies by 10.9 percent and all agencies across the government by 10.2 percent.
Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/03/14/freedom-information-act-what-numbers-tell-us
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