History of WikiFOIA

The federal Freedom of Information Act was signed on July 4th, 1966 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. It governs documents held by the federal government.

What about documents maintained by lower levels of government--your state, state government agencies, your school district, city or county?

To the extent that you are able to review or obtain copies of those documents, it is because of the open records legislation in your state. All states have such laws, and the laws differ significantly from one state to another.

The first state to adopt an open records policy governing documents held by state and local units of government was Wisconsin in 1848. Many states did not follow suit until the 1970s, in the wake of the Watergate scandal. The laws continue to adapt and change. Open CRS (Congressional Research Reports for the People) has a periodically updated Freedom of Information Amendments Report available for those interested in tracking the delevopment of national FOIA laws.

Laws promoting a spirit of transparency through public access to documents are great. We enthusiastically support them.

However, when it comes to filing a request for a public record and actually getting the document you requested, things do not always go smoothly. We note an April 2007 example from the District of Columbia, where District police lose 1500 open records requests in a two-year period. The State Sunshine and Open Records blog regularly follows breaking news about state and local open records requests and lawsuits.

The WikiFoia project was started after considerable first-hand experience with the wide varieties of ways in which a public document request can be stonewalled or denied, as well as hearing other people's stories about the many hardships they encountered while trying to obtain copies of public documents from a local or state government agency.

The difficulty in finding useful resources and the lack of helpful information available in most states can be very frustrating. It's also hard to know how to respond when the agency you've approached for documents denies your request, demands excessive fees, or obstructs your request in other ways.

We also realized--as we spoke to many people who use open records requests to promote government transparency and accountability--that experience matters. People who have been filing open records requests for a long time, we saw, have learned a variety of approaches and strategies that work.

We decided that an online resource, community and information portal where people could share their success stories and find guidance when they come up against a rock in the road might be a good idea. Thus, the WikiFoia was born in March 2007.

Please participate in this project with your handy links, requests that have met with success (and ones that have not), ideas for improvement and thoughts on the FOIA process. Please take special note of the pages we have created that contain resources specific to your state--anything you can add there will may be just the piece of information someone needs to successfully complete an open records project or request.

Thank you!
info@wikifoia.org

Take a look at An Examination of the Conditions Surrounding the Passage of The 1966 U.S. Freedom of Information Act by Grace-Ellen McCrann for some historical information about FOIA.

Or read Michael R. Lemov's commentary on Congressman John Moss, the primary author of the federal Act.

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