[JURIST] The Public Interest Declassification Board [NARA backgrounder] Wednesday pressed President George W. Bush for improvements to the existing US records declassification scheme in an era of increased government secrecy [JURIST news archive]. In a new report [PDF text], the group recommended establishing a National Declassification Program under the National Archivist, promulgating a system for identifying historically significant information, and setting up a system to expedite the declassification of presidential records. AP has more.

In April 2006, an audit [text and supporting materials] conducted by the Information Security Oversight Office [official website] of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) [official website] revealed [JURIST report] that over one-third of documents held by NARA that have been removed from public access since 1999 should not have been reclassified.