From the inception of the American federal government, Congress has required executive branch agencies to make certain information and records publicly available to make the actions and information of the government transparent to the public. Some scholars and statesmen, including James Madison, described information access as an essential cornerstone of democratic governance. In an August 4, 1822, letter to William T. Barry, Madison wrote, A popular Government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. At the same time, Congress has protected other information from public release. Access to government actions and information is often in tension with information protection. Certain government actions and records are protected from public release for, among other reasons, national security and personal privacy reasons. President George Washington, in a March 1796 speech in the House of Representatives, for example, refused to provide the House with a copy of the instructions to the Minister of the United States in the Treaty with the King of Great Britain, sending the chamber a message that read as follows: [t]he nature of foreign negotiations requires caution; and their success might often depend on secrecy; and even, when brought to a conclusion, a full disclosure of all the measures, demands, or eventual concessions which may have been proposed or contemplated would be extremely impolitic: for this might have a pernicious influence on future negotiations; or produce immediate inconveniences, perhaps danger and mischief, in relation to other Powers. Among the congressional powers available to enforce federal transparency and to protect certain other materials from public release are the powers to legislate, hold hearings, issue subpoenas, and control the federal budget. Congress has, from time to time, used its legislative powers to create and amend laws that affect the public's access to government operations and records. Among these laws are the Federal Register Act, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), the Government In the Sunshine Act, and the Privacy Act. Although there are laws that affect access to government information, there is no single definition for what constitutes transparency—nor is there an agreed upon way to measure it. Social scientists and practitioners have offered a variety of definitions for transparency; among them are "active disclosure" and "the publicizing of incumbent policy choices." These two definitions convey that transparency is linked to the release of information to an interested public. Transparency , however, may be defined as not only the disclosure of government information, but the access, comprehension, and use of it by the public. Scholars and private organizations have attempted to measure transparency by surveying citizens and journalists on their perceptions of government openness as well as by examining executive branch implementation of FOIA. These measures have sometimes relied on public perceptions of transparency or journalists' accounts of information access. Each definition and measurement of transparency has strengths and weaknesses. Attempts to make the executive branch more transparent require Congress, the public, and the executive branch itself to ensure that appropriate information is released and that the information can be used and analyzed. Users of such released information, therefore, must have the time and the tools to interpret and understand the data in order to hold government accountable. Congress plays an active role in defining the balance between transparency and secrecy in American democratic society. While openness in government is considered essential to democratic operations and deliberations, secrecy can protect Americans from security threats, privacy invasion, and economic harm. As agencies increasingly use new technologies to collect, maintain, and release federal records and data, Congress may have an interest in ensuring that the public has the ability to find and use the data properly. Additionally, Congress may choose to determine whether agencies are inappropriately withholding documents or improperly releasing sensitive materials. Accordingly, this report assesses scholarly and practical definitions of transparency and provides an analysis of the concept of transparency, with a focus on transparency in the executive branch of the federal government. It also examines how the release of large amounts of public data may make the operations of government more or, counter-intuitively, less transparent. Releasing vast amounts of raw data, for example, could make it difficult for the public to find the information they seek or to understand how to analyze data they find. This report examines statutes, initiatives, and other items that seek to make information more available to the public as well as those that seek to protect certain information from release to the public. This report examines transparency and secrecy from the standpoint of how the public historically has and can currently access government information. It also explores the statutes and policies in place to ensure the protection of certain information from public release. The report then describes existing powers, authorities, and initiatives that promote transparency or protect federal records from public release. Finally, this report analyzes whether existing transparency initiatives are effective in reaching their stated goals. As already noted, there is no single definition of what constitutes transparency or method for measuring it. For the purposes of this report, transparency comprises not only the disclosure of government information, but also the access, comprehension, and use of this information by the public. Transparency, as such, requires a public that can acquire, understand, and use the information that it receives from the federal government. This concept of transparency, however, is not the only possible designation of the term. Richard W. Oliver, in his book What is Transparency? wrote that transparency has come to mean "active disclosure." Other scholars have defined government transparency as "the publicizing of incumbent policy choices," and "the availability and increased flow to the public of timely, comprehensive, relevant, high-quality and reliable information concerning government activities." In addition to scholarly definitions of transparency, private organizations that serve as government watchdog groups have put forth their own meanings. Transparency International, a global civil society organization that seeks to fight government corruption, defines transparency as "a principle that allows those affected by administrative decisions, business transactions or charitable work to know not only the basic facts and figures but also the mechanisms and processes." The organization goes on to state that "[i]t is the duty of civil servants, managers and trustees to act visibly, predictably and understandably." The Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit organization "committed to improving access to government information by making it available online," does not offer a particular definition of transparency. Instead, the foundation delineates 10 principles of government openness that provide access to data. These principles are "completeness, primacy, timeliness, ease of physical and electronic access, machine readability, non-discrimination, use of commonly owned standards, licensing, permanence and usage costs." A number of different approaches have been used to attempt to measure or quantify transparency or its effects. Some scholars and government practitioners may argue that defining transparency is difficult, but they understand it in practice. Transparency International, for example, surveys a variety of people and institutions on their perceptions of transparency in selected nations to create a "Corruption Perceptions Index." The index supposes that perceptions of corruption serve as a proxy for transparency in government. Though the two may be related, it is unclear whether corruption or perceptions of corruption provide a reliable measure of a particular government's efforts to be transparent. Global Integrity, an independent, non-profit organization that tracks "governance and corruption trends around the world," uses journalists' reports and structured surveys to create its Global Integrity report, which measures "governance and corruption." Like the Corruption Perceptions Index mentioned above, however, this measure might capture only perceptions of openness and perceptions of corruption, without capturing a nation's efforts to be transparent, or reach acceptable levels of transparency. Scholar Justin Fox, who studied levels of transparency within the United States, took the approach of examining the integration of FOIA's principles into the operations of executive branch agencies. He examined whether FOIA was incorporated into each agency's performance plan, how much agencies spent on implementing FOIA, and whether the agency established performance measures for implementation of FOIA. Mr. Fox's research captured how agencies respond to information requests, but did not address proactive transparency—a practice in which agencies release records, datasets, or other information without it having to be requested from someone outside the agency. Proactive, sometimes called pre-emptive, transparency would eliminate the need that information be requested because the information would already be publicly available. A person who submits a FOIA request, however, may need knowledge and skills unique to that request. For example, the requester must know that a document exists in order to request it. The requester must also know how to properly draft a FOIA request and to where they should address the request. Requesters also must understand limitations on certain information requests, including the possible denial of a request based on the government's claims that the release of a record or portion of a record could endanger national security, invade an individual's privacy, or cause harm to the economy. Mr. Fox's measure of transparency assumes FOIA requesters already know what records are available as well as how to use those records if they are released. His study, therefore, may not measure U.S. transparency, and instead may measure how effective the public is in using FOIA—a single tool of federal transparency. Scholar Archun Fung examines "transparency systems," or "government mandates that require corporations or other organizations to provide the public with factual information about their products and practices." The effectiveness of these systems, Mr. Fung argues, can be measured, in part, by how accessible and useful information is to the audience who receives it.