State Sunshine and Open Records is a blog about freedom of information, open records and access to public documents. It is associated with WikiFoia, is sponsored by the Lucy Burns Institute and is written by Leslie Graves and Joshua Meyer.
Since July 2007, The Lucy Burns Institute has been the proud sponsor of The Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week award.
(A photograph of Lucy Burns in the Occoquan Workhouse.)
The Lucy Burns Institute is a Wisconsin not-for-profit corporation. We are dedicated to sharing information, guidance, practical advice, legal developments and news about open records at the state and local level.
We’re interested in hearing about and helping you with your state or local-level open records projects and requests. Please email us.
We also invite your active collaboration and participation in building the WikiFoia.
Get your WikiFoia logo here.
The building in Madison, Wisconsin where our office is located:
Open Records 
You are doing a good thing with WikiFoia. However, it is totally inconsistent with openness not to list all of the people – by their real names – who are behind the project and contributing to it. “Maverick” just doesn’t cut it. What are you hiding? And when you add this, make it prominent; don’t make people hunt for it.
Thanks for the comment, Terry.
It didn’t occur to me that there would be a perception that someone was hiding in a significant or troubling sense by using a screen name on a Wiki, so I’d like to hear more about that from you.
We hope that WikiFoia contributors will all feel free to do that. But, it’s certainly possible that people won’t want to contribute to the Wiki if they experience the same sense you have that it is hiding something.
I also need to work on a series drawing some distinctions that seem salient to me between private sunshine and public sunshine.
I’m doing some research on NSA and its associate, connected, or otherwise affiliated sites. My original project was to create a file for inclusion in the under-construction Cold War Museum.
My project will include information on NSA and particularly its collection sites worldwide, as well as those of other countries which may or may not be part of the NSA family.
I understand this would most likely not be in the realm of your site; however, I’d appreciate any publicity or assistance you may have access to.
I’ve done the Google search, of course, and have come up with a significant amount of material. However, as is to be expected, the info out there is, for the most part, on the well- or better-known sites. One of these sites, Sinop, Turkey, where I was once stationed, is what piqued my interest when I discovered that, although the term “NSA Field Station Sinop” is used commonly on the Net, I received a call from an NSA investigator, questioning me about the use of the term when I sent in a FOIA Request. Which, by the way, was replied to with words to the effect of, “We ain’t got nuttin’!” And in record time, I think, less than two weeks.
I appreciate any assistance or advice you can relay.
A nice job indeed. I don’t know about all the complaints from the other commenters, but i surely enjoyed this blog and i think it’s a wonderful idea. Well, different persons, different opinions.
I stumbled through your blog last week and came back again today due to its richness and interesting posts. Keep up the good work. Looking forward for a little read after dinner!
I would love to collaborate and participate in building the WikiFoia, Is there any link where I can get to know how to workout the things.
Hi Leslie,
I hope all is well. Are you/is this blog on Twitter?
Thanks,
Jon
I’ve done the Google search, of course, and have come up with a significant amount of material. However, as is to be expected, the info out there is, for the most part, on the well- or better-known sites. One of these sites, Sinop, Turkey, where I was once stationed, is what piqued my interest when I discovered that, although the term “NSA Field Station Sinop” is used commonly on the Net, I received a call from an NSA investigator, questioning me about the use of the term when I sent in a FOIA Request. Which, by the way, was replied to with words to the effect of, “We ain’t got nuttin’!” And in record time, I think, less than two weeks.
+1