No Treat for Papering Agencies

If you’ve been a FOIA professional long enough, you’ve been papered. It makes one feel like the homeowner who discovers a toilet-papered yard the morning after Halloween – all trick, no treat. For FOIA professionals who haven’t been papered, here’s how it works: a requester will flood email inboxes, mail boxes and yes, even fax … Continue reading No Treat for Papering Agencies

Tips on Getting Down to Business

FOIA’s Exemption 4 protects from disclosure commercial and financial information provided to the government by individuals and a wide range of entities – from corporations and banks to Native American tribes. The idea is to safeguard certain private business records in government files. About two dozen representatives of the agency and requester communities participated in … Continue reading Tips on Getting Down to Business

OPM Seeks Agency Comment on New FOIA Job Series

We’re pleased that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) recently proposed a new job series that would cover Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) professionals. OPM has asked Federal agencies to submit comments regarding the draft Position Classification for the proposed job series by October 31st. In a nutshell, OPM proposes an occupational series, GS-0306, titled … Continue reading OPM Seeks Agency Comment on New FOIA Job Series

Reaching Out

Coinciding nicely with the recent convening of the Open Government Partnership, a global effort to make governments more transparent, effective and accountable, OGIS Director Miriam Nisbet is privileged to have traveled to China recently to meet with government officials and university faculty and students in conjunction with Yale Law School’s China Law Center.  The context … Continue reading Reaching Out

Onward and Upward!

After two years of providing mediation services and working to improve the FOIA process, it’s time for self examination. During the last two years we’ve focused on figuring out how to do what we do while we were doing it. Our customers and stakeholders have provided valuable feedback regarding how we’ve helped them and how … Continue reading Onward and Upward!