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
This year’s conference, “Access: Oversight & Priorities,” was held as
usual on March 16. The venue for this year’s event changed, however, from the
rooftop conference center at the Freedom Forum in Arlington to the National
Press Club in Washington, D.C.
The conference brought 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 was sponsored by the First Amendment
Center. Sunshine Week and the Sunshine
in Government Initiative co-sponsored the event, which was held in cooperation
with the American Library Association, OpenTheGovernment.org and the Coalition
of Journalists for Open Government.
2007 program agenda
Remarks
Conference coverage:
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.