Accountability: Freedom of Information - Online

The Sunlight Foundation has proposed Federal legislation that would require government to provide meaningful access to its information online. In the words of its organizational sign-on letter, the Public Online Information Act (POIA)

requires government information that is public to be made available in the broadest, most accessible manner — online. Our vital public information can enhance accountability, spur commerce, and empower citizenship, but only if we create and require meaningful digital access to it. POIA creates this meaningful access through two mechanisms.

First, POIA mandates that the Executive Branch make public records permanently available on the Internet, with a few exceptions....

Second, POIA creates an advisory body of government officials and private citizens to ensure that all three branches of government...will coordinate the development of government-wide Internet disclosure policies.

The act also creates procedures similar to those available under Freedom of Information Act to enable organizations and individual citizen to pry loose information from reluctant bureaucrats.

Sunlight Foundation proposes Public Online Information Act, LII Announce (Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School 2010-03-16)
More about the Public Online Information Act (Sunlight Foundation)
Read a summary of the Public Online Information Act or read the entire bill