Over the last four years, agencies have made important strides to improve the government’s overall FOIA administration.  As discussed in OIP’s recently posted Summary of Annual FOIA Reports for Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 (PDF), agencies continued to respond to increasing numbers of incoming FOIA requests in the last fiscal year by processing a record high number of requests and reducing the government’s overall backlog by 14%.  Agencies achieved these important milestones while improving overall processing times and continuing to maintain a high release rate for requests processed for a disclosure determination.  It is important to remember, however, that there is still work to be done to ensure that progress continues to be made in FY 2013.  

In these final months of the fiscal year, agencies should pay particular attention to not only reducing the number of FOIA requests in their backlogs, but also to reducing the age of their backlogs by closing their ten oldest pending requests from FY 2012.  Both the President and the Attorney General have stressed the importance of timely disclosure of information in response to FOIA requests.  Noting in his FOIA Guidelines (PDF) that the “[t]imely disclosure of information is an essential component of transparency,” the Attorney General declared that “[l]ong delays should not be viewed as an inevitable and insurmountable consequence of high demand.” 

In accordance with that directive, OIP issued guidance last year calling on agencies to “renew their focus on their ten oldest requests and the steps that can be taken to ensure that every effort is made to close those requests by the end of the current fiscal year.”  The guidance also explained that “[a] related and equally significant way that agencies can assist in this effort [to close these older requests] is by making sure that they close the ten oldest consultations they received from other agencies every fiscal year.”   Because the consultation process relies on the efficiency of multiple agencies, “any delay [for an agency] in receiving a response back on [a] consultation necessarily also delays the final response to the request.”

 Further emphasizing the importance of closing agencies’ oldest requests, shortly after OIP’s guidance was issued, the Acting Associate Attorney General joined the Counsel to the President in sending a memorandum to Agency General Counsels and Chief FOIA Officers (PDF) asking these officials to “review [their] oldest pending FOIA requests, and take affirmative steps to resolve them.”

Closing the ten oldest pending requests and consultations each year represents a significant step not only toward reducing overall backlogs at agencies, but also to improving FOIA administration across the government.  With less than four months remaining in FY 2013, it is important for agencies to reassess the steps needed to close their oldest requests, to identify any barriers to closing them, and to develop solutions that will allow for the processing to be completed by the end of the fiscal year.  Through these sustained efforts by all agencies the government overall will be able to continue to make progress in this key area of FOIA administration. 

The full guidance article, as well as the memorandum from the Acting Associate Attorney General and Counsel to the President, is available on the OIP Guidance page of our site.  If your agency has any questions regarding this or any other FOIA topic, OIP’s FOIA counselor service is available at (202) 514-FOIA (3642).

Each year, federal departments and agencies are required by law to submit a report to the Attorney General detailing various statistics regarding their agency’s FOIA activities, such as the numbers of requests processed and received, and the time taken to process them.  These Annual FOIA Reports, ninety-nine in total for Fiscal Year (FY) 2012, are compiled by OIP and posted on the Reports page of our site.  The data from the agency Annual FOIA Reports is also uploaded onto FOIA.gov, the Justice Department’s government-wide FOIA resource.

In order to provide agency personnel and the public a comprehensive picture of the government’s FOIA activities during the fiscal year, OIP routinely creates a summary of the information contained within agency Annual FOIA Reports.  Today, we posted our summary of these reports for FY 2012 (PDF).  As in previous years, the summary looks at government-wide data for many key statistics in FOIA administration and highlights significant numbers reported by individual agencies.  Additionally, the summary identifies trends in FOIA processing by comparing the FY 2012 Annual FOIA Report data with data from prior fiscal years.

As described in this year’s summary, during FY 2012 the government overall:

• Received and processed more FOIA requests:  651,254 total requests received and 665,924 total requests processed, a 1.1% and 5.5% increase (respectively) over the total numbers reported at the end of FY 2011;
• Reduced the government-wide FOIA request backlog:  The government’s overall FOIA request backlog was reduced by 14% from 83,490 requests at the end of FY 2011 to 71,790 at the close of FY 2012.  This also represents a nearly 45% reduction from the 130,419 requests reported as backlogged at the end of FY 2008; 
• Maintained a high release rate of above 92% for the fourth straight year:  Of the 464,985 requests processed by agencies for a disclosure determination in FY 2012, a full or partial release of information was made in response to 93.4% of these requests, with 50.3% constituting a full release of records.  This marks the fourth year that the number of responses to FOIA requests providing a release of information either in full or in part exceeded 92% of the requests processed for a disclosure determination (FY 2009 – 94%; FY 2010 – 92.6%; FY 2011 – 93.1%; FY 2012 – 93.4%); and
• Improved average processing times:  The government overall improved the average processing times for simple (22.66 days), complex (82.35 days), and expedited track requests (40.2 days) when compared to the processing times reported at the end of FY 2011 (23.65 days, 103.74 days, 55.22 days, respectively).

OIP’s Summary of Annual FOIA Reports for FY 2012 is available on our Reports page where it can be compared with previous summaries dating back to FY 2006.  The data collected in agency Annual FOIA Reports can also easily be viewed, compared, and analyzed on FOIA.gov.

Sunshine Week 2013 marked the fourth anniversary of the issuance of Attorney General Holder’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Guidelines.  In addition to implementing the presumption of openness in FOIA, these guidelines highlighted the important role of agency Chief FOIA Officers in improving FOIA administration across the government.  The Attorney General directed all Chief FOIA Officers to review their agencies’ FOIA administration each year and to report to the Justice Department on the steps taken to implement the FOIA Guidelines and improve FOIA at their agencies. 

For the last four years, these Chief FOIA Officer Reports have played an important role in allowing agencies to go beyond the statistics in their Annual FOIA Reports to more fully illustrate the various concrete steps they have taken to implement the Attorney General’s FOIA Guidelines.  The reports give agencies the ability to provide depth and context to the varied steps that they are taking to increase efficiency and improve performance in the FOIA process.  They also provide a vehicle for agencies to describe the innovative ways information is being released to the public proactively.

In addition to providing a central location for all the 2013 Chief FOIA Officer Reports submitted by agencies, we have compiled a selection of success stories and agency highlights for the fifteen cabinet departments.  These success stories, and the reports overall, demonstrate the commitment of federal agencies to improve the FOIA process across the entire government.  

For more information on agency Chief FOIA Officer Reports, including the reports filed by agencies in previous years, please visit our Reports page.

Each year the federal courts issue hundreds of decisions in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases, addressing all aspects of the law.  These decisions shape the way the law is interpreted and applied by the thousands of attorneys and access professionals across the government who handle FOIA requests, administrative appeals, and litigation.  To aid those professionals, and to facilitate greater understanding of the FOIA overall, in March 2007 our office began publishing monthly summaries of significant FOIA decisions.  In an effort to improve access to these summaries, in 2011 we established a separate Court Decisions page which organized all the summaries by topic as well as chronologically. 

Today, we are proud to announce the launch of a new Court Decisions page and the most significant update to this FOIA resource since its introduction.  The new, enhanced Court Decisions page adds two powerful features for viewing and searching through our case summaries while continuing to allow users to view these summaries by topic and chronologically. 

The first new feature improves upon users’ ability to view case summaries by specific topics, such as “Exemption 5″ or “Agency Records.”  Users will now be able to view full summaries of significant FOIA decisions related to a certain topic by simply selecting that topic from the “View Court Decisions by Topic” drop down menu on the right side of the page.  Previously, these summaries were sorted into separate topical pages, with each page only containing those portions of the case summary that were relevant to the specific topic selected.  For example, a court may have addressed both an agency’s use of Exemption 5 and Exemption 6 in its decision, but the topical page for Exemption 5 would only list the relevant information for that exemption.  On the new Court Decisions page, users are able to view the entire summary of the court’s decision, including those portions relevant to the selected topic.  Additionally, the summaries are fully tagged with all relevant topical categories, which can easily be accessed at the bottom of each summary.  This allows users to continue their search of new topics as they read through case summaries.

The second feature for the first time provides the capability for case summaries to be searched using any keywords or phrases that are of interest.  Through the “Search Court Decisions 2013 – Present” feature on the right side of the page, users may search for keywords such as “contracts” or “e-mail” to find all summaries that mention these terms.  Searches can even be conducted by specific courts.  For example, a search using the terms “Exemption 6″ and “S.D.N.Y” would produce all of the decisions involving Exemption 6 from the District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The new Court Decisions page contains all case summaries decided since January 2013 and each summary is posted based on the date the decision was issued by the court.  As more decisions are added, the list of available topical categories will be expanded to cover all the areas addressed by the courts.  We hope that the enhancements made to this new page will continue to make these summaries a valuable FOIA resource for both agencies and the public. 

For court decision summaries from March 2007 to December 2008, please visit the FOIA Post archive.  Decision summaries from January 2009 to December 2012 are available in the Court Decisions Archive.

Each year the Department of Justice submits a report to Congress detailing its efforts to encourage agency compliance with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).  The FOIA Litigation and Compliance Report describes the different ways in which the Office of Information Policy (OIP) works to provide training, guidance, and counseling to agencies to assist them in their administration of the FOIA. 

As detailed in the report, during 2012 the Department issued guidance on several topics designed to improve FOIA administration and to further promote the directives contained within President Obama’s Memorandum on the FOIA and Attorney General Holder’s FOIA Guidelines.  This guidance included:

• New procedures on the implementation of the FOIA’s statutory law enforcement exclusion provisions designed to bring greater accountability and transparency to their existence and use without compromising the important national security and law enforcement interests that are at stake;
• Renewed focus on the importance of agencies closing their 10 oldest pending requests and consultations each year; and
• Direction to agencies based upon OIP’s assessment of agency progress in 2012 (PDF), including use of more advanced technology to assist in core processing tasks and establishment of multi-track FOIA processing queues to improve processing time for “simple” track requests and provide requesters with the option of tailoring their requests so that they fit within the track that can be processed more quickly. 

The 2012 Report describes the Department’s increased outreach efforts including its FOIA Technology Working Group, which serves as a forum for agency personnel to discuss application of technological and digital tools to various aspects of FOIA administration.  OIP’s contribution to the Department’s expanded use of social media is also discussed with details on the launch and use of @FOIAPost.  With the launch of this Twitter account, OIP is using social media to alert the public to FOIA Post articles, guidance, FOIA Library updates, and many more online resources with a goal of reaching the largest audience possible.

Additionally, the 2012 Report details how the Department is promoting greater accountability in the administration of the FOIA itself.  New quarterly reporting requirements for key FOIA metrics provide the public with more timely access to FOIA data during the course of the fiscal year, rather than having to wait until after completion of the year to have access to that data.  OIP also continued to update its chart of statutes that courts have found to qualify for use with Exemption 3 of the FOIA (PDF), as well as its list of statutes cited by agencies in their Annual FOIA Reports in connection with Exemption 3 (PDF). 

Finally, each year the Department includes in its Litigation and Compliance Report lists of FOIA litigation cases brought and decided during the calendar year.  For the first time in the 2012 Report OIP is providing both of these lists in an open, machine-readable format (CSV), as well as in a portable document format (PDF). 

These are just some of the many efforts taken by OIP to encourage agency compliance with the FOIA which are detailed in the 2012 Litigation and Compliance Report.  This year’s report, as well reports from years past, can be viewed on the Reports page of our site.

Later this month we will be continuing our series of FOIA Requester Roundtable meetings, once again bringing together the FOIA requester community and agency FOIA professionals in an open forum for discussions regarding FOIA administration.

The topic of this meeting, hosted in conjunction with the Office of Government Information Services, will be the FOIA’s fee and fee waiver provisions.  The discussion will focus on an overview of the current fee structure and some of the challenges in administering this area of the law.

The details for this meeting are:

FOIA Requester Roundtable Meeting
FOIA Fees and Fee Waivers
Department of Justice – Office of Information Policy
1425 New York Avenue, NW – Suite 11050
April 24, 2013, 10:00 am – 12:00 pm

We hope that you can join us for this discussion, which is open to members of the public as well as to all interested agency personnel.  These Requester Roundtable discussions provide an opportunity for the FOIA community to participate in the exchange of ideas with agency personnel, with the goal of increasing the understanding of the issues that all parties face when working with the FOIA.

If you are interested in attending this meeting, you can register by e-mailing your name and phone number to OIP’s Training Officer at DOJ.OIP.FOIA@usdoj.gov with the subject line “April Requester Roundtable Registration.”  As space for this meeting is limited, registration is required to attend, and please remember that you will need a picture ID to enter the building.  If you have any questions regarding this event, please contact OIP’s Training Officer at (202) 514-3642.