ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, September 19, 1996 TAG: 9609190062
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
Prying secrets from federal bureaucrats has depended for 30 years on a law written in the age of carbon paper. This week, Americans' right to know was nudged toward the electronic age.
The Freedom of Information Act was written at a time when the government owned only 45 computers, not today's tens of thousands. As a result, information sought under the act often came on paper - of less and less use to journalists and other investigators who now use the power of computers to extract meaning.
Congress acted this week to bring FOIA up to date.
The new Electronic FOIA passed without dissent by House and Senate and is awaiting President Clinton's expected signature. It prods federal agencies to share their data electronically when that's what the requester wants.
Why does that matter?
Consider Tom Blanton, who runs the National Security Archive at George Washington University, a nongovernmental library of government documents.
Blanton wanted to publish the White House e-mail written by Oliver North and others in the Reagan-Bush years and accumulated on 5,907 computer tapes and hard drives.
For four years, the Reagan and Bush administrations resisted giving him the e-mail. When the government finally relented last year, these computer-created materials were delivered on paper - 2,500 pages of it - the least usable format for Blanton.
In the computer age, format is king.
Tasks that can be done in seconds with a computer can take years when the information is on paper.
Case in point: Five years ago, the Miami Herald wanted to match the names of people with permits to carry concealed weapons against a list of school bus drivers.
No problem, said the state of Florida, but it provided the list on paper - yards and yards of paper. That ruled out a computer match of drivers and permit holders. The project had to be abandoned, recalls Nora Paul, who at the time was the Herald's editor for information services.
Since the Herald was dealing with the state government, the federal law wouldn't cover that situation. But it will remove barriers erected in Washington.
The bill would compel agencies, which receive about 600,000 FOIA requests a year, to release information in the format requested, whenever possible - computer diskette, CD-ROM or the Internet, for example. Its passage culminates a five-year effort by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
But FOIA is not just a reporter's tool. Most requests come from businesses, scholars, citizens with tax troubles, aliens trying to keep from being booted out, prisoners, city and state governments, public interest groups - anybody with a yen for information the government has gathered.
LENGTH: Medium: 58 linesby CNB