Back in May, we posted a recommendation on this blog regarding referrals. We’d recently had several OGIS cases in which agencies making referrals neither identified the name of the agencies to which they referred requests nor offered to assist requesters in determining the status of the referred requests. The requests appeared to have disappeared into … Continue reading What’s Up with Referrals? Redux
Author: kmitchell
Movin’ On
OGIS is on the move. Since opening in September 2009, OGIS’s home has been in the National Archives’ building in College Park, Md., far from many folks outside the Archives with whom we regularly interact. On Friday December 9, we’re moving to the Federal Register building at 800 North Capitol Street in Washington, D.C. We’ll … Continue reading Movin’ On
Time to Reform Fees?
Issues involving fees comprise a small percentage of OGIS’s caseload – about 5 percent in the two years that ended September 30, 2011. While small in number, the issues are big, consuming agency resources and causing delays. Through our casework, we’ve seen agencies place requesters in the wrong fee category; misapply search, review and duplication … Continue reading Time to Reform Fees?
Giving Thanks
In this season of thankfulness, OGIS offers a short list of things to be thankful for (aside from not-from-a-can creamed corn, pumpkin cheesecake and homemade (beer) biscuits that will grace tables of OGIS staffers this Thanksgiving). In no particular order, OGIS is thankful for: FOIA itself. Right-to-know laws and constitutional provisions in 105 countries around … Continue reading Giving Thanks
Making Heads or Tails of Archives’ Records
The National Archives and Records Administration is home to some 10 billion records. Wrapping your mind around 1 followed by 10 zeroes can be a challenge, and so can figuring out whether and how the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) applies to those records. OGIS is here to help. While it’s difficult to apply a … Continue reading Making Heads or Tails of Archives’ Records
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
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
Twenty days … or not
When Elvis sang “Twenty Days and Twenty Nights” he didn’t have FOIA in mind. But the title refrain is sure to spark many in the FOIA community to think about the statutory requirement that agencies respond to requests within 20 business days (5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(A)). It’s a topic that has many OGIS requester customers … Continue reading Twenty days … or not
Regarding Rulemaking
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 … Continue reading Regarding Rulemaking
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