President Obama signs bill to expand access to federal records

President Barack Obama signed into law a bill to strengthen the government’s open records laws. The legislation to update the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) made it over the finish line after years of delays, which were partly blamed on behind-the-scenes opposition in the Administration. The changes would put the force of law into a 2009 Obama directive urging agencies to err on the side of disclosure when handling open records requests. Journalists, researchers and Congress have all criticized the current system, which often results in agencies delaying requests for years and many times requires litigation to finally dislodge the federal records.

The new law codifies a so-called presumption of openness, which critics say executive agencies have not lived up to despite Obama’s directive. Under the new provisions, agencies would have to point to a specific "foreseeable harm" when withholding documents. The legislation will also limit the government’s withholding of documents related to the deliberative process — an exemption that is widely used and some say abused — if the records are more than 25 years old. The legislation would also create a single FOIA request portal for all agencies, make more documents available online and give more authority to the government’s FOIA ombudsman. The legislation is the first major overhaul of the 1966 law in more than a decade, and it has been a long time coming.