Almost a full year ago OMB Watch filed a request, under the Freedom of Information Act, to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for information on their Critical Infrastructure Information (CII) program. The request sought an accounting of how the program was used thus far including the number of submissions, rejections, and communications, as well as program procedures for handling information. Unfortunately, DHS was not very prompt with answers. In fact, it took a summons filed in the DC Circuit Court to get even a few pieces of basic information about the CII program.

In perhaps one of the most significant moves to advance openness and accountability within the federal government in the last decade, Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced bipartisan legislation to strengthen the public’s hand in obtaining information from federal agencies under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Entitled the Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National (OPEN) Government Act (S. 394), the legislation would:

• Allow the public to recoup legal costs from the federal government for improperly withheld documents;

As President Bush continues his efforts to raise anxiety across the country about the Social Security program, more and more members of Congress, both Democrat and Republican, are starting to speak uniformly on the need for patience in working towards a solution. Even House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan urged caution and called for further debate in approaching Social Security reform this past week.