When Congress created OGIS in 2007, it did so by adding 104 words to the Freedom of Information Act. What Congress didn’t do was dictate how OGIS would provide mediation services or review agency FOIA policies, procedures and compliance or recommend policy changes to Congress and the President to improve FOIA.
That’s typically left for federal rulemaking, a sometimes lengthy process in which agencies work through the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to create regulations to implement the law. We at OGIS have been busy writing a regulation to detail how we carry out the portion of the statute pertaining to OGIS and several months ago it was shared with other Federal agencies. We received a lot of constructive comments – so many that we realized we couldn’t adequately address them all by the deadlines imposed by the rulemaking calendar. We pulled the regulation temporarily, and will continue to work on it. Stay tuned!