Throughout 2011, OGIS observed a recurring concept: Federal agencies are succeeding through internal collaboration. This “team approach” to government operations promotes efficiency, reduces redundancy, and helps an agency successfully meet its statutory mandate. One area where teamwork is particularly important is records management; we’ve observed that many agencies are getting wise to this fact. President … Continue reading A New Game Plan: Teamwork Really Works!
Records requests pertaining to third-party individuals are the next order of business for the FOIA Requester Roundtable series co-hosted by OGIS and the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy. The roundtable will be from 10 a.m. to noon Tuesday January 24 at the National Archives, 7th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington DC, near … Continue reading The Skinny on Third Parties
Consider this: a multi-agency FOIA portal that automates FOIA processing and reporting, stores FOIA requests and responses in a repository and keeps records electronically. Not to mention allows requesters to submit requests to fewer government websites, track the status of requests and find, view and download FOIA requests and agency responses, all in a secure … Continue reading FOIA Portal Moving from Idea to Reality
As regular readers of this blog know, OGIS moved from College Park, MD, to Washington, D.C., one month ago. Our mailing address, email addresses and toll-free number remain the same, but our local telephone and fax numbers have changed. (For anyone concerned that our mail stills goes to College Park, MD, rest assured that there … Continue reading Updated OGIS Language for Agencies
As 2011 comes to a close, we at OGIS are taking some time to reflect on our second full year of operations. We are happy to report that we reached some milestones this year. Our outreach program continues to take root: we developed a 5-Step FOIA Dispute Resolution Process, which we routinely present in inter-agency … Continue reading 2011: A Look Back
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
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
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?
This week, after a year in the works, OGIS launched our new website and case management system, the OGIS Access System (OAS). Our excitement over the completion of this process isn’t just sky high — we’re literally in the cloud. The new OAS will manage more effectively and efficiently the requests for assistance that FOIA … Continue reading OGIS on ‘Cloud Nine’
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
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