Big Brother Has To Keep His Files Open To Us All

A week in Washington, D.C., is something every high school civics class, and every journalist, relishes.

For the civics class, the highlights include the circle of flags around the Washington Monument and the lobby of the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum.

For journalists, it is the bouquet of facts, figures, and politics that fills the area like so many cherry blossoms in spring.

This is why the American Society of Newspaper Editors annual convention brings 500 newspaper editors to D.C. each spring. This year’s overload on facts, figures and politics included these nuggets:

Convicted criminals filed 65,000 civil lawsuits against the government last year, costing taxpayers $81 million to defend (from Sen. Bob Dole in his luncheon speech on Friday).

Since 1993, the federal government’s work force has been cut by 240,000 positions, meaning the federal government today employs fewer people than at any time in the last 30 years (from Vice President Al Gore, in a Thursday speech).

A reporter is the only person Jimmy Stewart punches out in the movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, in a Tuesday speech).

These facts, and hundreds more, made news. Big-name politicians talked of downsizing government, the peace prospects in Bosnia, and the federal courts. Beneath the facts, figures and speechmaking, however, a more difficult issue hung in the air around the editors.

Despite all the facts and figures thrown out, much of what the government does has become increasingly hard to track - in every government office.

At the U.S. Department of Justice, for example, the FBI is 5.6 million pages behind in its processing of requests for information about government investigations, litigation, and requests for documents.

In the last 12 months, more than 50 bills have been introduced in Congress to cut back access to records of government agencies. At the state level, changes in records-access law continue to reduce the ability of the public, and the media, to track what is happening in local government and courts.

For example, Spokane Police soon will go to a new computerized record-keeping system that will mix both public information about crime with information the police need to keep under wraps for investigations. At this point, there is no good way for the public information to be separated and made available. The result? Less access to police records.

The growth of electronic record-keeping, in fact, will mean that while even more information will be collected about government and its activities, gaining access to this information will be increasingly difficult.

This should be troubling to the public. On one hand, each of us is more likely to have our names on file, and information about us retained on a computer disk. Concerns over privacy likely will begin to creep into the minds of even the most computer-literate.

But privacy is only the most easily accessible issue related to the twin trends of increased computerization of information and increased difficulty in gaining access to it.

The computer also could make it more difficult to keep government accountable. Without good guidelines about how to gain access to electronic information, the chances for abuse of electronic records increase. One possibility is that people who know how to access electronic records will be tempted to do so for business advantage or political purposes. On the other hand, people who would like access to these records to inform the public, or to set the record straight, but don’t have a clear legal path to follow, may find their efforts inhibited if the keepers of electronic information don’t cooperate.

In his speech to the editors a few days ago, Newt Gingrich noted that secrecy in documents and government information almost always leads to a bad result.

Access to information about the workings of government is vital, he said, to help people in a free society. Gingrich, in fact included an open government clause in his “Contract With America.” (Item 2: Requiring government committee meetings to be open to the public.) But he has yet to help move an electronic records access bill through the House.

To its credit, the Clinton Administration signed Executive Order 12958 a year ago that automatically declassifies many government documents that are 25 years old or older.

But the issue of access to newer, electronically-stored government information still remains but a tiny blip on the radar of most government offices. And, instead of going to the source of information, more and more media are relying on the press releases and paid announcements of politicians, often because the media don’t know how to access information as well as they once did.

And, while we fret about computers cataloging our lives and invading our privacy, few people have even heard of the efforts to pass the Electronic Freedom of Information Act. This legislation would simply ensure that the public and the press have the same access to electronically-stored records as they do to records on paper.

The need for tracking the work of government agencies, law enforcement, and the courts has never been greater.

People are cynical about government. They are cynical about the media. One way to reduce the cynicism is for the media to dig out the facts about the workings of government and let the public see them.

For that, we need good law, and hard work to assure freedom of information in an electronic age.

, DataTimes MEMO: Chris Peck is the Editor of The Spokesman-Review. His column appears each Sunday.