What is the Sunshine in Government Initiative?

SGI is a coalition of media groups promoting policies that help ensure the government is accessible, accountable and open. More in Our Mission.

Find 600 FOIA stories near you!

Find 600 stories using the federal FOIA by clicking the map, or browse the entire collection.

SGI encourages Congress to enact Faster FOIA

SGI applauds the Senate for advancing FOIA reforms again and encourages the Congress to act again to make FOIA work better.

Last week SGI sent a letter encouraging congressional leaders to restore the text of the Faster FOIA Act to a bill used to address the unrelated debt limit crisis by the House of Representatives. When the House failed to include the language creating a FOIA study commission and defeated the bill, the Senate quickly passed the Faster FOIA Act for a second time this Congress. 2011-08-02

SGI's voice heard in Congress during Sunshine Week 2011

And on Thursday, March 17, 2011, former Washington Post reporter Sarah Cohen, now a scholar at Duke University, represented the news media in a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The hearing, convened by Chairman Patrick Leahy, highlighted the flaws in FOIA and frustrations that senators as well as requesters have with the system.

"The federal government should post in a searchable location online all [FOIA] requests, responses, and milestones so requesters can track the progress of their requests online and in aggregate identify the bottlenecks in the process," SGI coordinator Rick Blum testified (pdf) before members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at a hearing held during Sunshine Week to assess the state of FOIA.

The Sunshine in Government Blog