National FOIA Hall of Fame
National FOI Day is an annual, daylong program of speaking and discussion by specialists in various aspects of freedom of information, updating developments in FOI over the preceding year.
2010 National FOI Day Conference
The 12th annual National Freedom of Information Day Conference was held Monday, March 15, in the Freedom Forum’s Newseum. This year’s conference title was “What Has Become of Freedom of Information?”
Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., chairman of the House Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives, was keynote speaker for the event.
Hosted by the First Amendment Center, the conference brought together access advocates, government officials, judges, lawyers, librarians, journalists, educators and others to discuss timely issues related to transparency in government. The program was co-sponsored by Sunshine Week and held in cooperation with the American Library Association, OpenTheGovernment.org and the Sunshine in Government Initiative.
The conference included announcement by the American Library Association of the winners of its annual James Madison Award. Receiving the 2010 award were the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and Meredith Fuchs, general counsel for the nonprofit group National Security Archive.
The program also featured a session with Miriam Nesbit, director of the Office of Government Information, and Norm Eisen, special counsel to President Obama for Ethics and Government Reform.
Agenda
Conference coverage
Remarks
Sunshine Week events
For information from previous National FOI Day programs, see cases & resources.
FOI Day history
The idea of a National FOI Day to be observed on March 16 in honor of James Madison’s birthday emerged in the late 1970s. For a number of years, the National Press Club hosted a FOI program on different dates, but that program became subsumed by other interests in the early 1990s.
In 1993, Paul McMasters convened a “National Freedom of Information Summit” at the First Amendment Center in Nashville, bringing together most of the major players on FOI, right to know and government secrecy. That two-day conference resulted in a report titled “Battling for an Open Government.”
In 1996, working with the American Society of Newspaper Editors, McMasters convened another summit at the Freedom Forum on FOIA’s 30th anniversary called “Sunshine & Secrecy: The FOIA Turns 30.”
The first official National FOI Day conference was held at the Freedom Forum on March 16, 1999, and has continued ever since.