President Donald Trump’s administration announced Friday that the White House won’t release records of its visitors, raising new concerns from transparency advocates.
The decision not to voluntarily disclose White House visitor logs is a break from the policy of former President Barack Obama’s administration, even though Trump had called his predecessor the “least transparent president.”
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The National Archives and Records Administration has told the White House to keep each of President Donald Trump's tweets, even those he deletes or corrects, and the White House has agreed.
The head of the archives, David S. Ferriero, told two Democratic senators in a letter last week that the White House has assured him it's saving all Trump's Twitter blasts.
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Read More… from National Archives to White House: Save all Trump tweets
The White House has removed all of the information that was previously available through its open data portal, posting a message that encourages visitors to “check back soon for new data.” The old data, however, is still available through President Obama’s archive page, albeit in a format where some of the links are not functioning properly.
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2,473 days after President Barack Obama issued an Open Government Directive, half of the 15 Cabinet agencies of the United States have not complied with the most basic aspect of the executive order: publishing an open government plan on their open website.
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Read More… from Half of U.S. Cabinet agencies fail to comply with Open Government Directive
Judges don’t like it when someone makes a claim that turns out not to be true in order to get a lawsuit dismissed, such as claiming records don’t exist when they do. The White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) failed to disclose the existence of some records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request until after a federal judge had already ruled in the case.
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Read More… from Judge issues Order to Show Cause against White House OSTP in FOIA case
Since the United States joined the Open Government Partnership in 2011, U.S. agencies have been working alongside civil society to develop and implement commitments to increase transparency, improve participation, and curb corruption. From opening up Federal spending data to make it easier to see how taxpayer dollars are spent, to the We the People online petition site where the public can propose U.S. policy changes, to strengthening efforts to deny safe haven in the U.S. to corrupt individuals, our efforts to advance open government are making an impact.
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The watchdog group Cause of Action is suing the Justice Department for records on what is says are possible unethical disclosures of confidential taxpayer information to the White House, the organization announced Thursday.
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The president who came to office claiming he would have the most open and transparent presidency in history is now denying or slowing Freedom of Information Act requests for documents at an unprecedented rate.
In 1966, Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act, a law giving the public and journalists access to government documents in an effort to bring more transparency to our government. It is this law that Obama’s federal government is increasingly circumventing.
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Read More… from FEDERAL GOVERNMENT INCREASINGLY SLOWING, DENYING RELEASE OF DOCUMENTS
