The White House decided to celebrate National Freedom of Information Day on Monday by announcing that its Office of Administration is no longer required to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests.
The White House said it will be removing the federal regulation that subjects its record-keeping office to the transparency law, officializing a policy that's been in place since President George W. Bush, reported USA Today.
The office is responsible for record-keeping duties such as archiving emails, as well as providing administrative support and business services to the president's office.
In June 2008, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the office is not subject to FOIA regulations because it doesn't employ "the type of substantial independent authority that the D.C. Circuit has found sufficient to make an [executive office of the president] component an agency under the FOIA," reported UPI.
The ruling was made following the office's inability to comply with a government watchdog organization's request for some 22 million emails, which the White House said were deleted by a computer glitch.
Now, seven years later, during Sunshine Week - the one week of the year when news organizations are dedicated to highlighting issues with government transparency - and on National Freedom of Information Day, the office has decided to officially remove the FOIA policy from the Federal Register, saying its decision is consistent with the 2008 court ruling.
The White House is expected to publish the notice Tuesday, and as USA Today noted, it is not allowing a 30-day public comment period, meaning the rule will be final.
Transparency advocates are baffled at the timing of the announcement, which comes as the Obama administration via Hillary Clinton has been embroiled in a scandal over its preservation of records.
On top of all that, President Obama has repeatedly promised unprecedented transparency over the years, writing just days into his presidency in 2009, "My Administration is committee to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government."
However, many, including The Associated Press, have argued that the Obama administration is actually the least transparent in history.
"The irony of this being Sunshine Week is not lost on me," Anne Weismann of the liberal Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told USA Today
"It is completely out of step with the president's supposed commitment to transparency," she said. "That is a critical office, especially if you want to know, for example, how the White House is dealing with e-mail."
Most offices within the White House have always been exempt from FOIA requests, according to USA Today, however the Office of Administration responded to requests for 30 years up until late into Bush's presidency.
"You have a president who comes in and says, I'm committed to transparency and agencies should make discretionary disclosures whenever possible, but he's not applying that to his own White House," Weismann added.
Despite Monday's somewhat ironic decision, spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine told USA Today that the administration remains committed "to work towards unprecedented openness in government."
"Over the past six years, federal agencies have gone to great efforts to make government more transparent and more accessible than ever, including by making more information available to the public via our Open Government initiative and improving the FOIA process," she said.
