Sunshine Week begins March 15, 2026. The nationwide, nonpartisan initiative promotes the significance of open authorities and the general public’s proper to entry public data.
Child welfare companies usually relied on flawed drug assessments administered at childbirth to report tens of 1000’s of latest dad and mom to legislation enforcement.
In New York, guards who brutalized prisoners or coated it up had been hardly ever fired.
And a minimum of 50 individuals died whereas being handled behind bars by a for-profit well being care firm whose practices endangered these with psychological sickness.
With out public data, uncovering the info behind these tales would by no means have occurred. In some circumstances, reporters from The Marshall Challenge spent over a yr getting the federal government to show over key paperwork. They’ve additionally gone to nice lengths to scrutinize data, which at instances had been lacking items or outright inaccurate.
Reporters right here and throughout the nation routinely request public data to light up systemic failings, abuse and corruption throughout all ranges of presidency.
They achieve this below a federal legislation referred to as the Freedom of Data Act (FOIA) or state open data legal guidelines. All 50 states have a model of FOIA, generally referred to as Proper to Know or Sunshine legal guidelines.
Sunshine Week kicks off March 15. It brings collectively teams in journalism, schooling, authorities and different organizations to spotlight the significance of public data.
FOIA legal guidelines fluctuate by jurisdiction, however usually something written or recorded, together with public worker salaries, authorities contracts and company insurance policies, are open public data. Even emails between officers might be launched in some circumstances. Different paperwork, like data from an lively prison investigation, are sometimes closed. Information can come in several codecs, from laborious copies to spreadsheets and movies. Media retailers, together with The Marshall Challenge, have gone to court docket to power companies to adjust to open data legal guidelines. Nevertheless, FOIA isn’t only for journalists. Whereas guidelines fluctuate throughout states, virtually anybody can file a public data request.
Sheila Albers testified in assist of laws that may require public disclosure of investigative reviews on police shootings in 2020. Police in Overland Park, Kansas, killed her 17-year-old son, John Albers, in January 2018.
Sheila Albers turned an open data advocate after police in 2018 shot and killed her 17-year-old son, John, in Kansas. She found the officer quietly left the division after receiving a severance payout. When the federal government makes it troublesome to acquire public data, Albers stated, it’s working to guard itself as a substitute of the neighborhood.
Data revealed by data can elevate consciousness — and immediate change, from new legal guidelines to the launching of investigations.
A paper path of invoices in Ohio confirmed a decide steered practically $500,000 to a good friend she had appointed to supervise advanced divorce circumstances. The Marshall Challenge – Cleveland’s reporting on now-former Choose Leslie Ann Celebrezze led to her resignation and prison prices. She pleaded responsible in January to tampering with public data for making a false court docket entry that despatched the work to her longtime good friend.
In Mississippi, public data illustrated how few jail homicides have been prosecuted. Not solely did the state Division of Corrections announce it might reopen uncharged homicides going again to 2015 after the investigation was revealed by a consortium of journalists led by The Marshall Challenge – Jackson, however the reporting effort supplied grieving relations with solutions they’d looked for years.
Final yr, The Marshall Challenge, together with St. Louis Public Radio and APM Experiences, gained the Brechner Freedom of Data Award for a undertaking on unsolved homicides. The group spent practically three years pursuing data from the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Division. The work helped change coverage and open extra data to the general public.
Dan Curry, the lawyer for the Missouri Press Affiliation’s hotline, stated entry to public data is “a relentless, widespread challenge.”
As an illustration, when reporters search data from the Missouri Division of Corrections, a typical response is that it may take 90 working days, which quantities to over 5 months. A spokesperson for the company didn’t reply to a request for touch upon the lengthy wait instances.
A request going again practically two years for details about an individual in custody with the Arizona Division of Corrections stays listed as “in progress.” In a Feb. 4 replace, the company stated that “the Public Information workplace continues to be within the technique of reviewing data for responsiveness and for required redactions.”
A yr in the past, a reporter submitted a request to the U.S. Division of Homeland Safety and requested for it to be expedited, given the intensification of immigration enforcement below President Donald Trump. The division denied expediting the data and has not despatched any of the requested materials.
Within the lead-up to Sunshine Week, The Marshall Challenge submitted over a dozen requests to corrections departments searching for their FOIA logs from 2025. Basically, it was a request for previous requests filed by others.
The responses various extensively. Vermont posts detailed details about the standing of data requests on-line. Mississippi needed $191. Oklahoma denied the request. Missouri stated they’d no data to ship, that means it possible doesn’t preserve a log. Michigan despatched 40 pages of paperwork that included the requester’s title and date, however contained nothing concerning the precise request. Texas responded with a 334-page PDF that included details about the request, however not the standing. Washington stated the data could be prepared by April 1.
Dave Roland, director of litigation of the Freedom Middle of Missouri, which represented a person in a 10-year combat for police data, stated authorities transparency is key to understanding how energy is getting used and cash is being spent. Additionally it is “an extremely in style thought,” Roland stated, that garners assist throughout occasion strains.
However some states are shifting within the different course. Companies in Ohio can now cost as much as $75 per hour for making ready video data, equivalent to physique digicam footage from legislation enforcement officers. Final yr, Utah handed a legislation limiting the cost of lawyer charges to a requester after they problem a data denial in court docket. Legislators in Colorado are proposing extending response instances.
Terry Mutchler, an lawyer with 30 years of expertise in open authorities legal guidelines, stated the nation is “in a harmful second relating to transparency.”
A part of that comes from the angle on the prime.
“Beneath this [Trump] administration, we see a unprecedented pressure on what it means to be clear,” Mutchler stated.
She pointed to the Division of Authorities Effectivity, the company launched below the Trump administration that made cuts to the federal workforce, and claimed it was not topic to FOIA.
In current months, numerous organizations have sued Immigration and Customs Enforcement over FOIA requests on arrests and detention.
Mutchler stated data ought to have guardrails to guard private privateness, however when reporters or others face resistance to requesting open data, equivalent to contracts, they need to push again.
“Individuals neglect that residents personal these data,” she stated. “That’s the true drawback.”
