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Breaking Through Barriers

Strategy and technology improve access to government information

By Carol Guensburg

October 2007

       In early April, after her editor noticed a series of voluntary toy recalls, Tampa Tribune business reporter Mary Shedden began investigating the problem of lead in children’s jewelry made overseas. While waiting for a federal agency to provide a list of manufacturers – requested through the Freedom of Information Act – Shedden read medical journals, interviewed experts and identified an independent lab that the Tribune paid to test lead levels in a sampling of imported trinkets. A third of the 50 pieces contained toxic levels, Shedden wrote in a front-page story published June 24.
        “Our main hurdle was getting information from the Consumer Product Safety Commission. We spent about two months waiting” – and had to publish without specifics that would have helped retailers and consumers identify at-risk products, Shedden explains. In late August, while reading The New York Times, Shedden ruefully spotted the CPSC information she’d sought. “Had the number of recalls not increased and the [toy recall] issue not been so hot,” the list still wouldn’t have materialized, she speculates. “I don’t think it was intentional stonewalling, just because I know that agency is so understaffed…. But that’s not an excuse.”

        Shedden’s experience illustrates the challenge of tracking down some government information.

        Most federal agencies “don’t have a statutory mandate to disclose information other than through the Freedom of Information Act – and that’s after the fact,” explains Patrice McDermott, director of OpenTheGovernment.org, a nonpartisan coalition including journalism, consumer, library and “good government” groups. “Most of what they do is discretionary.”

      Or, as spokeswoman Jane K. Lee summarizes the Office of Management and Budget’s guidance to executive-branch agencies, in earnest bureaucratese: They “have a responsibility to provide information to the public consistent with their missions....”

Increased constraints

         In daily journalism, with little time for formal records requests, agencies’ discretion can mean the

difference between a hard-hitting story or none at all. While many public information officers take their

job titles literally – and readily proffer or find data and reports – others draw narrow parameters based

on limited resources or inclination.

       “Many of the information officers are not set up to provide information, they’re set up to control information,” says Pete Weitzel, coordinator of the Coalition for Open Government. “That’s an unfortunate change … over the last few years.”   

         Government information has gotten more elusive since October 2001, when then-Attorney General John Ashcroft sent a memo informing federal agencies that the U.S. Department of Justice would support FOIA denials with sufficient legal basis. “It was a 180-degree reversal,” Weitzel says. Ashcroft’s predecessor, Janet Reno, “had a presumption of openness, instructing agencies that they should release information unless it did harm to do so.” (A former managing editor for the Miami Herald, Weitzel adds that Reno’s father, Henry, a long-time Herald police reporter, broke him in on the beat.)

        In August, the coalition issued a report documenting FOIA responses in 30 federal agencies. “Still Waiting After All these Years” noted that “few agencies met the mandated 20-day response deadline.” Even though the number of FOIA requests fell last year, two of every five went unprocessed and the backlog increased. The coalition also found that “the number of full grants, in which the requester got all the information sought, hit an all-time low.” The number of partial grants rose slightly.

        Even when information isn’t forthcoming, it “doesn’t necessarily mean anything nefarious,” says Alice Rivlin, a former OMB director in the Clinton administration. “It’s often because the information doesn’t exist or hasn’t been pulled together the way the person is asking the question” – or the question hasn’t reached someone who has the answer, explains Rivlin, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, D.C. “Having said that, nobody should tell you [desired information is] confidential when it isn’t.”

        Foundations and other organizations may have invested in gathering, analyzing and disseminating some data that government hasn’t, Rivlin observes. “A primary source may not be the best for a reporter. You don’t want to do the data analysis yourself if somebody else has done it. Finding the academics and exploiting their knowledge is the first thing to do.”

Offsetting ‘deep Web’

     The federal government “is the largest single producer, collector, consumer and disseminator of information in the United States,” as OMB Circular No. A-130 reads. Some of it – involving national security, for instance, or personal finance or health – rightly belongs behind thick firewalls. But some public-interest information disappears into territory uncharted by search engines, or what OpenTheGovernment’s McDermott labels “deep Web.”

       “It’s one thing to make [information] available,” she says. “It’s another thing to make the information findable and usable.”

       A new Google initiative aims to ensure “that what is public is truly public,” says J.L. Needham, its manager of public sector content partnerships. Since mid-2006, the company has been working with various governments – at all levels, in the United States and abroad – to make public information more accessible. Google developed a technology called “sitemap protocol” that a Web administrator can use to let a search engine crawl an online database and catalog all its records. Google offers the nonproprietary technology free of charge through private-public partnerships.

     At the federal level, entities such as the National Center for Education Statistics and the National Archives have mapped at least some of their databases. Five states – Arizona, California, Michigan, Utah and Virginia – have done so, too. Agencies involved in health, education and child-care licensing were among the first to use the protocol to improve public access, Needham says.  

States improving access

       Independently, various governments have embraced technology and unveiled their inner workings. “There are examples of openness across the United States,” says Joel Campbell, who heads the Society of Professional Journalists’ Freedom of Information Committee. “Many state legislatures have harnessed the power of the Internet to put the whole legislative process” online, he adds.

        Weitzel concurs. “Right now, we’re seeing more positive signs in the states of open government and some movement toward greater transparency,” he says. For instance, when Florida Gov. Charlie Crist took office in January, the Republican opened an office of open government.

        The Internet has enabled newsrooms to pull reporters off traditional building runs and redirect coverage to issues instead of institutions. But the shift has widened the distance between government workers and journalists, creating more potential for information gaps.

        Campbell, a former reporter for the The Deseret Morning News in Salt Lake City, recalls “when I covered city hall, I was there every day” chatting with officials and staff – and finding stories. With more reliance on technology, he says, there’s less personal interaction, “less opportunity for that trust level to be built.”

        And trust remains vital to exposing and correcting problems.

        For instance, an inside source contacted a trusted reporter about the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services’ slow responses to reports of child neglect, sexual or other physical assault. KHOU-TV investigative reporter Jeremy Rogalski went online and combed annual reports, learning that agency workers failed to meet the state’s 24-hour response rule in more than 5,100 cases in both 2005 and 2006. The data prodded Rogalski to seek more specifics. “These aren’t just numbers. These are kids in harm’s way,” he says.

      Rogalski pushed the agency for records of the so-called Priority One cases, and “we fought back and forth.” He persuaded a supervisor to give him “a spread sheet with no names, no identifying services,” just data on when the call was received, the type of case, when it was assigned and when someone arrived. It showed waits of up to 248 days for a caseworker to respond to an allegation of sexual abuse, Rogalski recalls.

        He went back to the agency for one-paragraph explanations of the 60 cases with the longest delays. In Rogalski’s Feb. 21 report, administrators “claimed half were data-entry errors,” he says, but they admitted to “egregiously long delays.”

       As Rogalski says, journalists have to “keep pressing for public information.”

Reporting tips

      Build relationships with the people who control information. If they’re unfamiliar with you or your news outlet, arrange to meet off deadline. Consider sharing clips that demonstrate your skill and fairness in handling sensitive information.

       Build an independent database, as the Tampa Tribune did through laboratory testing. Use computer-assisted reporting to assemble data that can be examined for patterns and aberrations.

      Get in “a document state of mind,” SPJ’s Campbell advises. Know what kinds of documents an agency produces.  Take a few minutes to request documents that, over time, will yield deeper sources or trends, both Campbell and Rogalski urge. For instance, look at out-of-court settlements or compare public school salaries over several years.

       Clear up misunderstandings that keep records out of reach. Most problematic are documents that mix confidential and public information, leading some agency gatekeepers to conclude they’re off limits. But a redacted document may suffice. Many documents – involving education test scores, juvenile justice dispositions, affordable housing wait lists – “have segregable information,” SPJ’s Campbell says. “Give me the public information and take out the private.”

       Know your state’s open-records or sunshine law, and be prepared to educate agency gatekeepers. “Appeal to their civic duty,” Campbell suggests. Check statutes, which vary from state to state but typically require access to public officials’ meetings, public agency records, most court proceedings and police records.

       For more guidance, see SPJ’s “Open Doors” initiative at http://www.spj.org/opendoors.asp. For information on public access to local government in all 50 states, see the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communication’s Citizen Access Project at www.citizenaccess.org.

Guensburg is the Journalism Center’s senior editor.