FOIA at 60: full transcription

Sixty years after President Lyndon B. Johnson reluctantly signed the Freedom of Information Act into law, Americans enjoy a national transparency treasure in their ability to request, obtain, and analyze the records of their own government. Yet obtaining those records has rarely been slower, more difficult, or more uncertain than it is today.

While most FOIA requests do get a response, on the federal level, the allowed response window is 20 days, while it typically takes 289 days for requesters to get a response. And that response isn't always records, it's often just a note saying we received your request and will begin to search for the records you've requested.

More than 12 percent of all requests are rejected.

U.S. Department of Education: 5,266 requests received, up from 4,560 the prior year. Backlogged requests increased from 2,485 to 4,570, an 83 percent increase. For all processed perfected requests, an average response time of about 171 days for simple requests, and an average of about 128 days for complex requests.

It's gotten extremely bad in this last year and a half, but this has been going on for decades. We need to be able to file federal FOIA requests so we can see what this government is doing.