OGIS’s Acting Director, Nikki Gramian, took a turn in the big chair before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 6 to update the panel on OGIS’s activities over the last year. The hearing also included testimony from Director of the Department of Justice Office of Information Policy Melanie Pustay; State Department Chief FOIA Officer Joyce … Continue reading OGIS Acting Director Testifies before Senate Judiciary Committee
Thirty-three information commissioners—a.k.a freedom of information ombudsmen—from 25 countries gathered April 21-23 for the 9th International Conference of Information Commissioners to discuss transparency issues and share successes and challenges. It was a great honor to represent OGIS at the conference, hosted by the Chilean Transparency Council, in Santiago, Chile. Among the themes of the conference, … Continue reading Thinking globally
In 2007 Congress added a provision into the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that requires agencies to provide a requester with an estimated date by which the agency expects to complete work on a request, when the requester asks for one. This requirement helps the requester better understand the agency’s FOIA process and gives the … Continue reading Let’s Talk About Estimated Dates of Completion
Agency Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) regulations are one of the most important resources available to those requesting information from the federal government. As we’ve mentioned in the past, agency FOIA regulations are essentially the rule book the agency uses to process a request. And, as anyone who has ever played a new board or … Continue reading Let’s Make It Easier for Requesters to Use the FOIA Process
It’s time for another meeting of the federal FOIA Advisory Committee! Be sure to reserve your seat now for our Tuesday April 21 meeting from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Archivist’s Reception Room at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC. Similar to our last few meetings, the Committee’s subcommittees will … Continue reading Advisory Committee Meeting Set for April 21: Reserve Your Seat Now!
We’re pleased to release our second assessment of an agency FOIA program: the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) Special Access and FOIA unit. Regular readers will recall that we launched our agency assessment program last year to help us better fulfill our statutory mandate to review agency FOIA policies, procedures and compliance. (5 U.S.C. … Continue reading OGIS Releases Second Agency Assessment
Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 is shaping up to be a busy one for OGIS, just as FY 2014 was. Want to learn more about OGIS’s FY 2014? Check out our annual report: Building a Bridge Between FOIA Requesters & Federal Agencies 2015 Report for FY 2014. We’ve got a nifty page-turn version on our website, … Continue reading Announcing OGIS’s FY 2014 Report!
A position for a government representative recently opened on the Federal FOIA Advisory Committee! The Committee is a diverse group of FOIA experts from inside and outside the government with the shared goal of tackling some of FOIA’s trickiest issues. In keeping with the terms of the Committee’s charter, we are currently accepting applications for … Continue reading FOIA Advisory Committee Seeks Passionate Government Employee for Long-Term Relationship
Another Sunshine Week is in the history books. As always, the celebrations served as a powerful reminder about the importance of open government laws like the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and what we can all do to open the government more to the public. Just because Sunshine Week is over, though, doesn’t mean that … Continue reading Let’s Keep the Sun Shining All Year Long
Since OGIS opened in 2009, we’ve worked to improve the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process by providing mediation services and training to help agency FOIA professionals develop skills to communicate productively with requesters. We frequently see our efforts paying off as the FOIA culture shifts from being contentious and litigious to communicative and collaborative; … Continue reading You Can Help Keep a FOIA Request Out of Court
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