The U.S. Freedom of Information Act was passed in the low-tech mid-1960s when electro-mechanical devices mostly ruled our universe and even photocopiers were rare and fickle beasts.
Slow forward to now, and a look-alike law in Great Britain, enacted in 2005, is bringing down the Labor – whoops “Labour” – Party in Britain. Behind it all is an enterprising American freelancer in London with dual citizenship in the U.S. and UK, Heather Brooke, who has been campaigning for years for expense record disclosures from sitting members of Parliament and government cabinet ministers. Her dogged efforts have finally brought some new bite into the much weaker, same-name FIA law in Britain.
It’s mostly a digital world now, but getting at government records efficiently still remains kludgy on both sides of the Atlantic. In fact, some of the juiciest and most sought-after “secrets” in either country still aren’t even scanned – and the fusty bureaucrats charged with responding to requests aren’t exactly energized to overcome the backlog. Things are getting better on-line here, at least, and the U.S. Government now sports some 24,000, mostly searchable websites – but good luck finding what you are looking for in that electronic thicket.
Heather Brooke’s initial request for MP expense records was actually filed in London five long years ago ... before the British statutes were passed into law. Even her explicit victory before Britain’s special court set aside for records cases wasn’t enough to stop Parliamentary administrators from meandering and dragging their feet for additonal years – until Daily Telegraph reporters, inspired by Brooke’s dogged efforts and her constant website advocacy at Your Right to Know, finally broke the secrets dam with a mixture of official disclosures and old-fashioned leaks.
Now get ready for FIA on speed: Our first-ever Vulcan president, Barack Obama, has hired the U.S. government’s first-ever chief information officer, Vivek Kundra (Spock, Barak, Vivek … is anybody doing an ear tip check at the White House?) and the new guy hopes to push the creaky information bureaucracy into warp drive.
Go visit Kundra’s new website, www.data.gov, for a taste of what’s to come. His simple but ambitious goal, says Nicholas Thompson in a profile of Vivek in the July issue of Wired is this: “…to create a place where all the information [from the federal government] is easy to find, sort, download, and manipulate.”
Even James Tiberious Kirk would find that a challenging mission. Live long and prosper, Vivek.
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