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.
2007 National FOI Day Conference
The National FOI Day Conference will be held as usual this year on March 16. The venue for this year’s event will change, however, from the rooftop conference center at the Freedom Forum in Arlington to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
The conference brings together access advocates, government officials, lawyers, librarians, journalists, educators and others to discuss the latest issues and developments in access to government information and the public’s right to know.
The ninth annual FOI Day Conference is sponsored by the First Amendment Center. Sunshine Week will co-sponsor the event, which will be held in cooperation with the American Library Association, OpenTheGovernment.org and the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government.
More than a dozen nationally known speakers and presenters will appear on the program, and the agenda will include discussions of government secrecy, publication of classified information and access priorities for the coming year. The American Library Association will present its annual James Madison Awards, and new reports and publications will be released.
As the conference agenda is finalized, program details will be announced on the First Amendment Center Web site: www.firstamendmentcenter.org.
The conference begins at 8:30 a.m. and concludes by 2:30 p.m. There is no charge to attend, but because there is somewhat limited space, participants must register individually in advance.
To register for the 2007 National FOI Day Conference:
When registering, please provide your name, title, affiliation and contact information and let us know whether you will be attending the lunch.
Paul McMasters & Ronald K.L. Collins
Freedom Forum First Amendment Center
2006 National FOI Day Conference
This year’s conference, “FOIA at Forty: The Past’s Lessons for the Future,”
was held on Thursday, March 16, at the Freedom Forum’s World Center in
Arlington, Va. The symposium brought together access advocates, government
officials, lawyers, librarians, journalists, educators and others to discuss the
latest issues and developments in freedom of information.
This eighth annual FOI Day conference was sponsored by the First Amendment
Center in cooperation with the American Library Association. Additionally, as we
celebrate the 40th anniversary of the federal Freedom of Information Act,
Sunshine Week, which ran March 12-18, co-sponsored the conference.
2006 program agenda
Conference coverage
Remarks
Audio from conference
2006 FOI updates
Conference
speakers' bios
National FOIA Hall of Fame
inductees
New reports and other
publications
Sunshine Week '06
For information from previous National FOI Day programs, see cases
& resources.
Directions
to conference
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.