Congress called on agencies to embrace disclosure and the digital era nearly two decades ago, with the passage of the 1996 "E-FOIA" amendments. The law
mandated that agencies post key sets of records online, provide citizens with detailed guidance on making FOIA requests, and use new information technology
to post online proactively records of significant public interest, including those already processed in response to FOIA requests and "likely to become the
subject of subsequent requests."
Congress believed then, and openness advocates know now, that this kind of proactive disclosure, publishing online the results of FOIA requests as well as
agency records that might be requested in the future, is the only tenable solution to FOIA backlogs and delays. Thus the National Security
Archive chose to focus on the e-reading rooms of agencies in its latest audit.
Even though the majority of federal agencies have not yet embraced proactive disclosure of their FOIA releases, the Archive E-FOIA Audit did find that some
real "E-Stars" exist within the federal government, serving as examples to lagging agencies that technology can be harnessed to create state-of-the art
FOIA platforms. Unfortunately, our audit also found "E-Delinquents" whose abysmal web performance recalls the teletype era.