Understanding the connection between HCI and freedom of information and access laws

of documents and data as a part of the Open Government Initiative [1]. The proactive release of data and documents not only can get the information to the public in a quicker manner, but also has decreased the number of and cost of handling FOIA requests [1]. Though not obvious, there is a strong connection between information transparency and interaction design. With the convergence of government transparency, big data troves, and automated technologies, governments are faced with the task of figuring out which kinds of interactivity to provide to document seekers, some of which they are entitled to receive under the law. For example, must governments disclose the metadata stored around electronic public records? This metadata can potentially reveal information about the creation or modification of documents, such as when the document was created, when it was accessed and edited, who edited it, and what they edited [2]. electronic databases, and thus fight corruption by encouraging accountability through transparency. One of the oldest open records laws is the Freedom of the Press Act of 1766 in Sweden. Other countries have more recent laws, such as Australia’s 1982 Freedom of Information Act and Canada’s 1985 Access to Information Act. The United States’ Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552, was enacted in 1966. Commonly known as FOIA, the Act establishes the right of the public to obtain information from all 15 departments of the federal government and 73 other federal agencies in the executive branch, but not the Congress, the courts, or the president. The U.S. Congress has amended FOIA several times, including changes in 1996 to accommodate the growth in Internet usage and electronically available information. Governments are increasingly collecting large quantities of electronic records and contemplating the release of such big datasets to the public. Within the Obama administration, there has been an Articles in the Interacting with Public Policy forum in this magazine address the intersection of interaction design and public policy. Some of these connections are obvious, for instance, when the Brazilian government ranks human-computer interaction research publications as low priority. Another aspect, although sometimes less obvious, is the relationship between laws regulating how the government provides the public with access to information and the principles of human-computer interaction. Two types of such laws are “freedom of information” laws (also known as open records laws or sunshine laws) and “disability access” laws, which require electronic information to be accessible to disabled persons using adaptive software such as the text-tospeech software used by the blind.