Since 1989, TRAC has been posting on the Internet a database with the name, work location, salary, and job category of all 2.7 million federal civilian workers except those in some law enforcement agencies. The data are often used by reporters and government watchdog groups to monitor policies and detect waste or abuse.
TRAC used the data to monitor the Bush administration's promise to increase security along the Canadian border after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Six months later, TRAC found that the number of Border Patrol agents on that border was up from 331 to just 346. Another year later, the number had reached 515, but not one was assigned to the Canada-Alaska border despite Alaska's potential strategic targets.
''Secret governors are incompatible with a free government," the TRAC co-directors wrote the federal Office of Personnel Management Feb. 2 when the agency withheld the data.
They are David Burnham, a former New York Times reporter who directs TRAC's Washington office, and Susan B. Long, a Syracuse University professor who runs its upstate New York office. The suit was filed in federal court in Syracuse, N.Y.
Mike Orenstein, Office of Personnel Management spokesman, said the agency would not comment until it had time to review the lawsuit.
Using the Freedom of Information Act, TRAC has obtained the data on compact discs every three months since 1989. The last complete data set provided by the Office of Personnel Management covered 2003. Since then, all records of civilian employees of the Defense Department have been withheld and name and duty locations were withheld for an estimated 150,000 other civilian workers, the lawsuit said.
Last spring, Lukowski forwarded the 2004 discs and noted that the ''major change affecting your request is that individual records for the Department of Defense are excluded from the file provided."
The lawsuit said that, in violation of the Freedom of Information Act, the Office of Personnel Management did not even mention that another 150,000 names and workplaces had been deleted or why and that the agency has not responded to requests to explain its new policy.
