Book Description

Excerpt from Federal Information Policy Oversight: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, House of Representatives, One Hundred Fourth Congress, Second Session; June 13, 1996 Mr. Horn. Good morning. The Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology will come to order, a quorum being present. It is a hallmark of a free society that those who are governed have access to the information within the control of those who gov ern. James Madison said it most eloquently when he wrote, A pop ular government without popular information or the means to ao quiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, said Madison, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives. It was in this spirit that three decades ago, Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act, or, as it is commonly referred to, the foia Act. As the 1966 committee report which introduced the act stated, the Freedom of Information Act would provide a, True Fed eral public record statute by requiring the availability to any mem ber of the public of all the executive branch records described in its requirements. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.