OPEN Government Act Signed into Law On Dec. 31, 2007, President Bush signed the OPEN Government Act (S. 2488)(pdf), which includes long-sought reforms of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Though some important provisions were dropped in order to reach bipartisan agreement in Congress, the bill creates incentives to reduce agency backlogs of FOIA requests, increases reporting requirements, and increases the scope of who can make requests and what entities are covered by FOIA. In an effort to reduce agency backlogs and improve FOIA procedures, President George W. Bush issued Executive Order 13392 on Dec. 14, 2005. The order, though, did little to relieve agency backlogs. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently reported, "Despite increasing the numbers of requests processed, many agencies did not keep pace with the volume of requests that they received." The OPEN Government Act, sponsored by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) in the Senate and Rep. Henry Waxman☼ (D-CA) in the House, seeks to resolve some of these problems....