Government Agencies Apparently Not Interested In Following Congressional Directives On Overclassification

from the you-literally-couldn't-pay-us-enough-to-do-our-jobs dept

I'm not sure what this says about government transparency. Maybe it doesn't say anything useful. Maybe it's just the mixed signals we can expect from agencies only willing to make the most minimal transparency efforts. Or maybe it says something about the momentum of even slowly-moving large objects. A bureaucracy has a large turning radius and asking it to suddenly change its ways means you have to lower your expectations as to how "suddenly" should be defined. Whatever it says, it's nothing good.

Overclassification is a government-wide problem. Legislation has been passed to fix it. While the government expects the private sector to get right on it when laws are passed, it obviously cuts itself a lot more slack when faced with internal legislative redirection.

Recognizing the threat posed by over-classification, Congress passed legislation in 2010 to counter the pervasive problem of bureaucrats making benign government records secret. One of the most highlighted provisions of the Reducing Over-Classification Act (ROCA) was a new tool for agencies: cash incentives for employees who accurately classify (and declassify) documents.

Congress hoped that by offering a proverbial carrot to the line-level employees making initial classification decisions within federal agencies, it could increase transparency and allow greater information sharing between federal agencies and local law enforcement.

Not even the dangling of cash money can push agencies towards more transparency, as the EFF's Dave Maass and Aaron Mackey report.

Based on the FOIA responses EFF has received, it does not appear that a single federal agency with the power to classify documents has ever taken advantage of ROCA’s cash incentives program. EFF’s FOIA request sought a variety of records related to the ROCA incentive program, including guidelines for issuing bonuses and the amount of bonuses given out.

Of the agencies we queried, 16 agencies responded that they either had no responsive records or that they do not operate a ROCA incentive program. Three other agencies denied our request, while the remaining eight have yet to provide a determination.

Congress has declared overclassification should be corrected by government agencies. The agencies have shrugged... for a half-decade straight. But hey, transparency! More than half the agencies responded and only three outright denied the EFF's request. That's… something.

Tellingly, two agencies that oversee a ton of classified info responded negatively. James Clapper's office (ODNI) couldn't find anything that suggested it had scaled back its black marker use, and the National Archives and Records Administration first said the law didn't apply to it, before changing its mind and stating it had never implemented the program.

Other agencies that cherish their secrecy and fully-redacted FOIA responses also had made no moves towards scaling back overclassification. The FBI, DEA, and ATF all responded that no one in their agencies had ever claimed ROCA's cash prizes. The same thing goes for the DHS, Defense Department, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The State Department offered two "no files found" responses, with the first implying it had trouble understanding the question.

"You have not reasonably described the records you seek in a way that someone familiar with Department records and programs could locate them."

and

"Some or all of the records you have requested do not appear to be State Department records.

The good news is the FOIA process works, at least in this small sampling. The bad news is there's apparently no effort being made to live up to the demands of ROCA, six years after its passage into law. The end result may look more promising, what with agencies (for the most part) amping up their FOIA response capabilities. But if they're not handing over documents because they've gone wild with the "CLASSIFIED" stamp, then they may as well just go back to ignoring FOIA requests.

The worst news, though, is that government agencies feel directives issued via legislation are entirely optional. Their employers, however, are not given the luxury of ignoring laws they don't like. Taxpayers are expected to follow every stupid law forced on them by their representatives while subsidizing entire agencies that shrug off their responsibilities to the public.

Filed Under: bonuses, classification, government, overclassification

Suggestion For Warner Music: Maybe Look At How Much You're Paying Your Execs

from the might-save-some-money dept

It's no secret that Warner Music has been struggling -- employing a highly questionable strategy of shutting down or suing all sorts of useful services that make its music more valuable, and then demanding ridiculous payment terms or equity in any company that might help them survive... all while the company slowly goes bankrupt. Following what can only be called a disastrous 2008, the company has shown a minor improvement in 2009, but it has all the indications of a dead cat bounce. The company was in desperate need of cash, and was able to get a loan of $1.1 billion last week to ease some of those concerns... but at a staggering 9.5% interest. Meanwhile, the guys over at Hypebot are wondering why WMG's top two executives were given $6.25 million in bonuses last year as the company was collapsing. And with some back of the envelope calculations, they note that the company could save hundreds of millions of dollars by dropping the bonuses and using the money to pay back the debt earlier, saving on some of the massive interest payments that are on the way.

Filed Under: bonuses, debt, edgar bronfman jr.
Companies: warner music group

Populist Outrage Over AIG Bonuses Scaring Private Investors Away From Buying Toxic Assets

from the backlash... dept

Before anyone gets that upset, I'll say that I'm pretty much in exact agreement with Adam Davidson from NPR's Planet Money when it comes to how to feel about the AIG bonuses that were big in the news last week. It's definitely disgusting and troubling to see the money handed out that way, but it's really a tiny sum in the big scheme of things, and there are a lot bigger and more important things that the government should be focused on. Besides, the populist anger is really misplaced -- often directed at the current management or the recipients of those bonuses, rather than those who put in place the contracts that made those bonuses required. But, the very fact that Congress spent so much time on it highlights something we warned about earlier this year: as soon as the government steps in to help a business, it's going to greatly hamstring what that company can do, since its every move will be extra-scrutinized and critiqued. That will certainly limit what many companies are willing to do.

And we're seeing that right now. With the administration spending the weekend trying to convince private firms to buy up a bunch of the "toxic assets" out there, many are (reasonably) worried that they might face AIG-bonus-style backlash. It makes them a lot less willing to act, exactly at a time when we need private firms to step up and clean up the mess.

Filed Under: bonuses, economy, populism, private investors

Bankers Getting Toxic Assets For Bonuses

from the two-birds,-one-stone dept

The various banks on Wall Street have a bunch of problems that they're dealing with right now, including getting rid of toxic assets on their balance sheet, properly compensating staff who are expecting big bonuses even in such a down year and figuring out ways to motivate staff to invest in good assets, even in such tough times. It appears that Credit Suisse Group may have come up with a creative solution to all of those things. Instead of cash bonuses this year, it's going to give employees some of those toxic assets it holds. This is incredibly creative for a variety of reasons. It starts to get some of those assets off the balance sheet. It gives them to employees who want bonuses, and it gives those employees quite the incentive to make sure those assets are actually worth something. Of course, since many of those employees recognize that the assets aren't worth much at all, many of them are pissed off, but it's pretty difficult to come up with any reason at all that they deserve any sort of bonus, so they're probably a lot better off accepting what they're given and seeing if they can actually make it worth something.

Filed Under: bonuses, toxic assets, wall street
Companies: credit suisse