Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

House of Representatives – Report Card on Federal Government’s Efforts to Track and Manage FOIA Requests

Report Card on Federal Government’s Efforts to Track and Manage FOIA Requests, Staff Report, House of Representatives, 112th Congress Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, March 15, 2012

  • “…on January 25, 2011, Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa sent a letter to 180 entities representing 100 government agencies requesting information about their FOIA tracking systems. The letter requested each entity to provide an electronic and sortable copy of its FOIA logs containing the following information: 1) the name of the requester; 2) the date of the request; 3) a brief description of the documents or records sought by the request; 4) any tracking number assigned to the request by the agency as required by Section 7 of the OPEN Government Act of 2007; 5) the date the request was closed, if not still an outstanding request; 6) whether records were provided in response to the request; 7) any additional identification number or codes assigned to the request by the agency for internal use…The Committee assigned its grade of governmentwide FOIA logs based on the average of the 17 Cabinet-level departments, which have the most components and receive the majority of requests. This grade was a C-, which is slightly below average, and it most accurately reflects the performance of the Federal government in this evaluation as related to the overwhelming majority of FOIA requests.”
  • Sorry, comments are closed for this post.