The Syracuse University Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse will receive a $55,750 grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.

TRAC is a joint program between the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, said Sue Long, co-director of TRAC and associate professor of managerial statistics. Its purpose is to make government records and information accessible to the public, Long said.

Long said the grant will help fund a project looking into noncompliance with the Freedom of Information Act.

FOIA is a law that ensures public access to U.S. government records, Long said.

‘It’s a very important law that says all federal records of the executive branch are public records unless they fall within narrow exemptions,’ Long said.

She said TRAC gets all of its data from filing FOIA requests. The problem, she said, is that there are no penalties for people who do not comply with the law.

The grant will help develop the infrastructure of the project, Long said, and will help TRAC start posting information on every FOIA denial it receives on a case-by-case basis. Information will be posted on the project’s website, FOIAproject.org, she said.

‘This new grant is allowing us to start the expansion, so we can look at the administrative requests,’ she said.

Long said she and TRAC co-director David Burnham, a former investigative reporter with The New York Times, had to propose the FOIA project to the EEJ Foundation to get the grant. The foundation then selected a few projects to fund, including Long and Burnham’s.

Long said the FOIA project is for members of the community who want to access information. The project will be to compile records detailing each FOIA denial at the administrative level. The project’s website will allow anyone to post FOIAs they have filed and any complaints or comments they may have, she said.

Ultimately, Long said this is a huge project, and she is excited about it.

‘The idea is that transparency is good,’ Long said, ‘and if in fact one could make available quickly and put it on the Web every decision where there was a denial, and details about that, that might shed some light and put pressure on government to perhaps think twice about withholding.’

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Published on February 21, 2012 at 12:00 pm

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