Alexander Howard  This Sunshine Week, open government advocates are reeling from an unprecedented and controversial shift in our government.  We have seen a widespread dismissal of the officials and civil servants entrusted with upholding the public right to know, and ensuring accountability for fraud, waste, and abuse of power.  The American people are being informed…

Irvin McCullough Three years ago, a friend told me artificial intelligence could write.  Curious, I asked a ChatGPT predecessor to draft a FOIA request.  The result confirmed my suspicion: interesting technology, terrible requests. When OpenAI released ChatGPT later that year, I tried again.  This time, it was notably better, though still far from something I’d…

Jason R. Baron  The recent emergence of generative artificial intelligence (“gen AI”) in the form of large language models (“LLMs”) such as ChatGPT has attracted great attention for its use in a wide variety of contexts.  Government agencies have been understandably cautious in authorizing employee use of gen AI applications (see OPM Guidance), although some…

Nicholas Wittenberg  The Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) is a cornerstone of governmental transparency, allowing the public to access federal records and hold agencies accountable.  However, the ever-increasing volume of electronic records, coupled with the complex nature of FOIA requests, has placed significant strain on agencies responsible for processing these requests.  Traditional manual review methods…

Ryan Mulvey Welcome to Sunshine Week 2025!  In 1921, during his speech acknowledging receipt of the Noble Peace Prize, the Norwegian historian Christian Lous Lange warned that “[t]echnology is a useful servant but a dangerous master.”  I think Lange intended his message to be two-fold: While technology can be used in so many innovative and…