Sunshine Week 2018

“The biggest difference that I’ve seen in Sunshine Week this year is less government participation.”  — Sean Moulton, Project on Government Oversight’s Open Government Program Manager.

Since 2005, government transparency advocates began gathering annually to celebrate “Sunshine Week.”  This has now grown into a nationwide movement with actions happening nationwide.

Locally The Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition hosted a day-long event here at the Denver Consistory, with a group of morning workshops designed to “shine a light on government” and an afternoon session of speakers following a luncheon.

Sean Moulton, the Open Government Program Manager at the Project on Government Oversight,  told KGNU’s Robin Ryan that though the digital age puts a transparent government in easier reach, there remains a gap between the expectations of what technology can do and what it does.

Several of the changes made to websites maintained by the government over the last year drew criticism from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who presented the Trump administration with a “Data Disappearance” Foilie as part of its Sunshine Week festivities. EFF began awarding Foilie’s in 2015, in recognition of the year’s worst in government transparency.

Moulton said a number of reports issued late in 2017 by Inspectors Generals at several federal agencies discovered errors in 80-90% of data sampled, which he described as beyond troubling.