Although Washington, DC, is facing the latest round of winter weather, we at OGIS are excited to announce our Sunshine Week 2019 event. Sunshine Week is an annual nationwide celebration of access to public information. Since the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) launched the initiative more than a decade ago, journalists, librarians, concerned citizens, civil … Continue reading Save the Date: Sunshine Week 2019!
Last week our Attorney Advisor, Sheela Portonovo, attended the 2018 Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) Conference to share best practices for successfully navigating the FOIA process. Below is a brief summary of the major issues with the FOIA process we regularly hear about from reporters (and others), and some of the tips she shared. Issue … Continue reading OGIS Shares FOIA Tips at IRE Conference
Registration is now open for the January 16, 2018 meeting of the FOIA Advisory Committee! The meeting is scheduled to run from 10 am to 1 pm in the William G. McGowan Theater. As we have shared with you all before, the FOIA Advisory Committee has been hard at work for more than a year … Continue reading Mark Your Calendars for the January 16, 2018 FOIA Advisory Committee Meeting
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) FOIA program in Lee’s Summit, Missouri invited several members of the OGIS staff to visit their facility this week to provide their FOIA staff with training and to facilitate an agency FOIA compliance assessment. OGIS’s training sessions are intended to teach FOIA professionals practical communication skills to … Continue reading OGIS Visits U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)
In October 2015, the White House released the Third U.S. Government National Action Plan. While NAP 3.0 includes a number of useful commitments from the National Archives, we are particularly excited about OGIS’s commitment to develop curriculum tools to introduce secondary students to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). FOIA is a powerful tool for … Continue reading Introducing FOIA to a New Generation of Requesters
It looks like FOIA requesters won’t be able to use their favorite access law to find out what really happened to Jon Snow. Last week the #FOIA Twittersphere was buzzing with news that an enterprising reporter had filed an unexpected Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request; she requested the advanced copies (or “screeners”) of the … Continue reading Game of Thrones FOIA Requesters Face “Stark” Reality
We play a valuable role in facilitating communications between a requester and an agency. A recent request made by National Public Radio (NPR) to the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) provides an example of this function. NPR reporter Caitlin Dickerson made a request to the NRL for records about a World War II-era medical experiment that … Continue reading Case Study in Clarity
As you might know, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires agencies to issue regulations that describe a few key areas of how the agency processes requests for information. Most agency FOIA regulations go beyond the bare bone requirements laid out in the law, however. The best agency FOIA regulations act as a map that … Continue reading Agency FOIA Regulations Update
There are few things in the federal government that do not go by a three letter acronym—or, in government-speak, a TLA. As we at OGIS (that’s the Office of Government Information Services!) are keenly aware, though, government acronyms are not limited to three letters—and they can refer to a wide variety of things. One acronym that … Continue reading What the Government’s Alphabet Soup Means for You
Whew! We at OGIS have caught our breath after a hectic Sunshine Week during which we joined folks from both the agency and requester communities in promoting the importance of open government and freedom of information. (Of course, these values are just as important during the other 51 weeks of the year.) If you weren’t … Continue reading OGIS’s Sunshine Week Wrap-Up
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