Office of Government Information Services logo As we at the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) celebrate our 13th birthday, Ombuds Day, and Mediation Week, we want to provide a refresher and overview of our services and explain a bit more about what we do as a part of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) … Continue reading Understanding the Office of Government Information Services (part 1/4)
U.S. Department of Justice Office of Information Policy Director Bobby Talebian. U.S. Department of Justice Office of Information Policy (OIP) Director Bobby Talebian provided an update on the Attorney General guidelines at this year’s American Society of Access Professionals National Training Conference in Arlington, Va. With regard to FOIA’s foreseeable harm standard, which Congress added … Continue reading OIP Director recaps AG Garland FOIA Memo
The International Conference of Information Commissioners (ICIC) met in June via hybrid (online and in-person) for the 13th International Conference. Alina M. Semo, OGIS Director, serves on the Executive Committee of the ICIC. As a part of this year’s work at the conference, the Commission issued a public statement around access to information, specifically that … Continue reading International Conference of Information Commissioners Issues Statement on Access to Information
Each day, people seeking records about themselves use the FOIA process to obtain their records as they navigate health care, employment, immigration, law enforcement or other issues that intersect in some way with the federal government. A government-wide look at what are known as “first-party requests” shows that the records requesters seek about themselves fall … Continue reading OGIS Publishes Issue Assessment on First-party Requests
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/4492629 While you may not be familiar with the term “enterprise search,” those who have recently submitted a broad FOIA request for email records are likely to be familiar with the challenges agencies face in conducting records searches across vast electronic repositories. On May 6, 2021, OGIS hosted a webinar with Centers for Disease Control … Continue reading Recap: Recent OGIS/CDC Webinar on Enterprise Searching
Main Reading Room, Helsinki Information Library(National Archives ID: 23932377) This post was written by Meredith Doviak, Community Manager of the National Archives Catalog, who conducted this assessment on temporary assignment to OGIS as part of a National Archives and Records Administration Cross-training Program. OGIS is pleased to announce our latest issue assessment examining the methods … Continue reading OGIS Publishes Assessment on Posting to FOIA Websites
The following post is written by Meredith Doviak, our National Archives colleague who is helping us assess methods agencies use to prepare documents for posting on agency FOIA reading rooms. In the decades since Congress amended FOIA in 1996 to expand the role of the agency FOIA reading room, the expectations and use of Federal … Continue reading Assessing FOIA Reading Rooms
Quick FOIA quiz: Is the White House subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)? Yes. And no. It depends on the function of a particular White House office. Offices within the Executive Office of the President that “wield … substantial authority independent of the President” are subject to FOIA, the Court of Appeals for … Continue reading The 411 on FOIA & the White House
Repeat OGIS customers may wonder why we sometimes ask them to provide consent to discuss their requests with agencies and other times we don’t. We recently contacted a requester whose consent we had asked for a few weeks earlier and told her, in essence: just kidding, we really don’t need your consent. So why … Continue reading Providing Consent
We get many requests for assistance related to FOIA Exemption 4, which protects from disclosure commercial and financial information provided to the government. For example, over the last few months we have heard from requesters frustrated about delays related to submitter notice and an agency interested in brainstorming how best to communicate with the entities … Continue reading Throwback Thursday: Thinking about Exemption 4
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