Is Washington More "Open" Under Obama?
This story was written by CBSNews.com political reporter Stephanie Condon
Since taking office a year ago, the Obama administration has released more than 25,000 names of White House visitors, made available more than 118,000 federal datasets, uploaded more than 700 videos on YouTube and accrued more than 7 million fans on Facebook.
For many voters who cast their ballot for Barack Obama in November, 2008, transparency in government was a central tenet of the "change" they expected from him. His approach to counterterrorism, his agenda for health care reform and his economic policies were all expected to be treated with a large dose of sunlight.
Many transparency advocates widely agree that President Obama has ushered in a new era of open government in Washington.
"This administration is moving in the direction of information belonging in the hands of citizens," said Ellen Miller, co-founder and executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan nonprofit that promotes open government via the Internet. "That is a very different view of things, not just in comparison to the last president but in comparison to all previous administrations. It's really a sea change."
But some say the president's efforts have fallen short. Watchdog groups are still waiting for the list of banks who benefited from the financial bailout, for instance, or the memos that explain the legal rationale behind the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program.
In an era of constant information sharing, and after a campaign built on lofty promises, Mr. Obama must be measured against the highest standards of transparency. A year into his presidency, it may still be too early to tell if he meets them.
Setting Up Expectations
From the start, Mr. Obama set clear, high expectations of transparency for his presidency.
"It's no coincidence that one of the most secretive administrations in our history has favored special interests and pursued policies that could not stand up to the sunlight," Mr. Obama said as a presidential candidate in 2007. "As president, I'm going to change that."
He promised to put government data online; let citizens track grants, contracts and earmarks; hold more public forums; and let people review and comment on legislation before it is signed.
Mr. Obama started toward this goal on his first full day in office by issuing an executive order to grant only sitting presidents the ability to claim executive privilege over their presidential records and withhold them from the public and the media. The executive order reversed an earlier order from the former President George W. Bush, which allowed former presidents that privilege of secrecy as well.
On that same day, he also signed a memorandum ordering agencies to "adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure" in all decisions involving the Freedom of Information Act, as well as a memorandum establishing new open government and transparency policies.
The president has received some high accolades for his efforts. Earlier this month, the president received an "A" for open government in a report card issued by the nonprofit groups Common Cause, Democracy 21, the League of Women Voters and U.S. PIRG.
But other open government advocates grade a little more strictly.
Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the nonprofit, libertarian Cato Institute, said he would give Mr. Obama the grade of "I" -- for "good intentions" and "incomplete."
"There's no doubting their good intentions, but as for actual delivery there's been precious little," Harper said. Still, he added, "Obama is a huge improvement over a very low baseline."
CBSNews.com Special Report: Obama's First Year
Transparency vs. National Security
Just weeks into his presidency, Mr. Obama revealed he was not willing to let go of all of the last administration's transparency policies, particularly with respect to issues related to national security.
In early February, the Obama Justice Department announced it would keep the Bush administration's sweeping interpretation of the states secret privilege in a lawsuit brought forth by five men who said they were kidnapped by the C.I.A. and tortured in overseas prisons. The Bush administration argued, and the Obama administration agreed, that the entire lawsuit should be thrown out because it would expose state secrets and threaten national security.
American Civil Liberties Union attorney Ben Wizner said the administration's interpretation of the states secret privilege has been one of the ACLU's "greatest disappointments" with Mr. Obama.
"It fundamentally undermines our separation of powers to have the perpetrators themselves telling the courts they should look the other way because of secrecy," Wizner said. "We're not even saying the public has a right to see the documents to litigate these cases, but that only the federal judges do."
Wizner, who argued the case for the five plaintiffs allegedly kidnapped by the CIA, points out that the Obama administration has declined to support legislation that would reform the states secret privilege. The State Secrets Protection Act -- of which then-Sen. Joe Biden was a co-sponsor in 2008 -- would write into law that "the state secrets privilege shall not constitute grounds for dismissal of a case or claim."
The Obama administration is also still withholding Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memos that would shed light on the legal rationale for President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, as well as photos allegedly showing prisoner abuse by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"It's a dangerous argument in a democracy that the worse the conduct at issue, the greater the need for secrecy," Wizner said with respect to the photos. "We would point at the abuse, and we would say that documentary evidence is necessary to ensure it won't be repeated."
On the other hand, transparency advocates do applaud the president for the steps he has taken to shed more light in the realm of national security, such as releasing OLC memos that describe the use of waterboarding and other extreme interrogation techniques employed by the United States. In August, the Justice Department declassified a 2004 CIA report examining the agency's treatment of terror detainees following the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And in September, Attorney General Eric Holder announced stricter guidelines for the use of the state secrets privilege, though he kept in place the administration's position on using it to block cases entirely.
The president also followed through in December on his promise to create a National Declassification Center. The executive order establishing the center sets standards for the process of declassifying once-sensitive information, and it establishes the principle that no records can be kept classified indefinitely.
"We have seen some changes, and those are not trivial," Wizner said. "We hope we'll see more changes."
Government, By the Numbers
Mr. Obama's efforts at transparency also extend beyond national security to the more mundane, everyday business of government. While the implications for this type of open government are significant, the results are still in nascent stages.
After some prodding from the media and transparency groups, the White House last fall began to release the names of White House visitors and has since released more than 25,000 visitor logs. Releasing that kind of information allows watchdogs to notice things -- like numerous closed door meetings with top drug lobbyists in the middle the health care debate.
Citizens and watchdog groups can also track stimulus investments at recovery.gov. While some have criticized the site, its existence has allowed bloggers and others to find errors and problems themselves - such as when government job creation reports were found to be attributed to "phantom" districts. People can also track the government's information technology spending on the IT dashboard at USASpending.gov.
And just this Friday, as a part of Mr. Obama's Open Government Directive, federal agencies and departments published at least three "high value" sets of federal data.
Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), lauded initiative but with some skepticism.
"Just because Obama said, 'I want more transparency,' that doesn't make it so," she said. "For the president's view to make its way down to people who make decisions on a day to day basis isn't easy."
While hundreds of thousands of datasets have been put online so far, some are more "high-value" than others. A large percentage of the data released on data.gov is old, obscure or data already available.
For instance, the Treasury Department released a dataset with quarterly reports on bank trading and derivatives. Ryan Sibley of the Sunlight Foundation points out this information has been available online since the 1990s, and moreover, a critical piece of data -- the identity of derivative investors -- is missing.
"A lot of these databases don't really add to the transparency of how an agency is performing its core missions," said Anne Weismann, CREW's chief counsel. "Part of the problem was that there was no definition or standards on what constitutes high value."
The Ugly Business of Governing
Mr. Obama has made efforts to expose the "sausage-making" of policy work.
The president has in part made good on his promise to post bills online for a period of time before signing them -- though Harper has noted that without a link on the front page of WhiteHouse.gov, the bills were initially hard to find.
Mr. Obama has also been criticized for his much-touted campaign promise to broadcast all of lawmakers' health care negotiations on C-SPAN -- a promise even the C-SPAN CEO wanted fulfilled.
"The negotiations are obviously being done in secret and the American people really just want to know what they are trying to hide," said Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.).
But Miller of the Sunlight Foundation was willing to forgive Mr. Obama for reneging on that promise of transparency.
"It would be foolish to say every aspect of the legislative process ought to be played out in front of a camera," she said. "Occasionally they have to turn off the lights and knock some heads and get things done."
On another controversial issue -- bank bailouts -- CREW's Sloan said the administration could step up the level of openness it has shown.
The Federal Reserve this month asked a U.S. appeals court to block a ruling that would force the central bank to reveal which financial institutions received money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Releasing that information could cause a run on banks, the Fed is arguing -- though there is no evidence to support that.
CREW filed an amicus brief in the case in support of releasing the information.
"I don't know if across the administration, everybody would take this position, and the Federal Reserve doesn't get messed with," Sloan said. Still, she added, "The administration should've come in and said something. It's on them -- they don't get to walk away."
