Could it be that the US is moving closer to that total transparency we all loved while visiting Sweden?.... First day at the office with Barack Obama suggests so!....
"More meaningfully to everyone except those on the White House payroll, Obama also moved to open access to government records. The Bush administration found new ways to limit the public's ability to see what the government was up to almost every day; it was as if the administration was competing with itself for the most imaginative excuse to refuse to release information. (For instance, the Securities and Exchange Commission recently tried to charge $70 an hour to process Freedom of Information Act requests.) Obama instructed the government, instead, to err on the side of openness. "For a long time now, there's been too much secrecy in this city," he said. "The old rules said that if there was a defensible argument for not disclosing something to the American people, then it should not be disclosed. That era is now over." The attorney general and the White House counsel will have to review presidential declarations that material is off-limits to FOIA requests in the future. A working group will also convene, within 120 days, to come up with ways to make government even more transparent."
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