On February 21st, the Office of Information Policy (OIP) will be hosting a seminar to discuss the use of digital tools in the administration of the FOIA.  The panel session will bring together OIP Director Melanie Ann Pustay with representatives from the Justice Department’s Civil Division and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to discuss the benefits that digital tools can bring to FOIA administration.

As noted in the Justice Department’s Open Government Plan version 2.0:

One of the most common delays in the processing of FOIA requests across the government is the time spent by FOIA personnel searching for, de-duplicating, and conducting initial responsiveness review on records, much of which is done by hand or using off-the-shelf software with limited capabilities for advanced document review and redaction. All of these steps must take place before a FOIA professional can even begin to review records for the application of FOIA exemptions and for ultimate release to FOIA requesters.

Using OIP’s unique dual position as both the government’s lead FOIA policy office, and as a processing and implementation office within DOJ, the plan announced that OIP was partnering with the Civil Division, with the support of the Justice Management Division, on a digital-FOIA pilot program.  The purpose of the pilot was to leverage existing resources to “conduct precise searches, to de-duplicate records, and to sort and organize [located] records electronically in advance of their review” by OIP FOIA professionals.  Test cases processed by OIP using the pilot program were compared to control cases using current OIP processes to measure and compare efficiency and speed in processing.

Next week, Director Pustay will be joined by Allison Stanton and Joshua Wood of the Civil Division to discuss the findings of this pilot program.  Additionally, Joan Fina of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission will discuss her agency’s successful experience in using digital tools to help manage an unprecedented demand for documents.  The details for this training are:

Exploring the Benefits of Leveraging Digital Tools for FOIA Administration
Department of Justice, Robert F. Kennedy Building
10th and Constitution Ave., NW – 7th Floor Conference Room
February 21, 2013, 10:00 am – 12:30 pm

This session is open to all federal employees.  Registration is required.  You will need a picture ID to enter the building for this seminar.

If you are interested in attending this event, you can register by e-mailing your name and phone number to OIP’s Training Officer, Bertina Adams Cleveland, at DOJ.OIP.FOIA@usdoj.gov.  If you have any questions regarding this event, please contact Ms. Adams at (202) 514-1010.

Last week representatives of government agencies and the requester community joined Director Melanie Ann Pustay for another meeting in our continuing Requester Roundtable series.  These meetings provide a regular opportunity for open discussions on numerous topics surrounding the administration of the FOIA between various interested stakeholders.

This meeting had a uniquely broad topic, “FOIA Libraries: Maximizing Usefulness from the Requester Standpoint.”  Intended as a brainstorming session, Director Pustay opened up the meeting to all attendees to see what types of information would be useful for agencies to include in their FOIA Libraries, identifying best practices employed by agencies and components, as well as pinpointing areas for improvement in the quality of information and organization of agency FOIA Libraries.

A number of topics were addressed during the meeting, but a recurring theme throughout the discussion was the fact that the decentralized nature of government FOIA processing leads to differences in procedures and types of records made available at federal agencies and their components.  The group discussed the benefits of including on FOIA webpages agency and component-level FOIA processing standards and/or requirements for making FOIA requests, including standards for requesting expedited processing, as well as descriptions of records maintained or topics covered by individual offices in order to help the public identify where to submit FOIA requests.  If you were unable to attend this Roundtable meeting, but would like to share your thoughts with OIP on how to maximize the usefulness of FOIA Libraries, please send us an e-mail at DOJ.OIP.FOIA@usdoj.gov.  OIP plans to issue guidance in the near future on FOIA websites and FOIA Libraries, and the input received from this roundtable meeting will prove valuable.

The Requester Roundtable series, which is held in connection with the Office of Government Information Services, will hold its next meeting on April 24, 2013.  Details on the topic, time, and location of this meeting will be announced prior to that date here on FOIA Post and on Twitter at @FOIAPost as they are finalized.

Today OIP posted its guidance to agencies on meeting the new quarterly reporting requirement announced last month.  Agencies will be required to report to the Department of Justice four key FOIA statistics that OIP will then make available on FOIA.gov. 

The quarterly reporting of FOIA data will benefit both the public, which will be able to more regularly track government FOIA administration, and agencies, which will now be able to more easily identify trends to help improve their FOIA operations.

FOIA quarterly reporting for federal agencies will focus on four key statistics of FOIA administration: 

• the number of requests received during the reporting period,
• the number of requests processed during the reporting period,
• the number of requests in an agency’s backlog at the end of the reporting period, and
• the progress being made to close the agency’s ten overall oldest pending FOIA requests from Fiscal Year 2012.  

Agencies must post these figures for Quarter 1 of Fiscal Year 2013 (October 1 – December 31, 2012) no later than January 27, 2013.  Detailed information on the posting is available in the guidance.  OIP’s quarterly Reporting Team is available at DOJ.OIP.FOIA@usdoj.gov to answer any questions agency personnel may have on this new requirement.

Guidance on quarterly FOIA reporting, as well as all guidance from OIP, is available on our Guidance page.

On February 11, 2013, the Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) Privacy Committee is holding an interagency symposium to explore the elements and standards that are necessary to ensure the high quality administration of the FOIA in times of limited resources.  The event, Faster, Better, Cheaper: Building a High Quality FOIA Operation, is designed for managers and supervisors of FOIA operations around the government to explore various issues related to FOIA processing including workforce and staffing, review processes, and appropriate use of technology. 

Office of Information Policy Chief of Staff Carmen L. Mallon will join Department of the Treasury Disclosure Services Director Hugh Gilmore in providing presentations at the symposium, and will  participate in a discussion moderated by Kathleen Styles, Chief Privacy Officer at the Department of Education.  Small group discussions will follow the presentations, allowing for an open dialogue between attendees who fulfill similar roles around the government. 

The details for the symposium are:

Faster, Better, Cheaper: Building a High Quality FOIA Operation
An interagency symposium from the Federal CIO Privacy Committee
Department of Education – Barnard Auditorium
400 Maryland Avenue, SW

Space is limited for this event and is intended for individuals serving in managerial and supervisory roles

If you are interested in attending this symposium, please e-mail your contact information and agency name to Letita.coates@ed.gov by February 7, 2013.  Please remember that a picture ID is required to enter the building for this event.

Last month, the Office of Information Policy (OIP) hosted its first ever training seminar through video conferencing.  The training proved to be a powerful tool, enabling OIP subject matter experts to reach a wider audience of federal employees who work outside of the Washington, DC area, as well as helping agencies reduce or eliminate travel costs and arrangements for employees to attend training.

Because of the overwhelming interest and positive feedback that we received with this training, OIP will host another video conference seminar next month.  This training will again focus on topics such as an Overview of the FOIA, addressing President Obama’s FOIA Memorandum, Attorney General Holder’s FOIA Guidelines, procedural considerations, and the FOIA’s exemptions.

The details for the training are:

An Overview of the FOIA – Video Conference
February 19, 2013
1:00 pm – 2:30 pm

Training is open to all federal employees, with priority for employees outside the Washington, DC area

If you are interested in participating in the video conference, you may register by e-mailing your name, phone number and duty station to OIP’s Training Officer, Bertina Adams Cleveland, at DOJ.OIP.FOIA@usdoj.gov.  If you have any questions regarding this event, please contact Ms. Adams at (202) 514-1010.

When passing the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Congress recognized that there were other federal laws that provided protection for specific types of documents, either currently enacted or that could be passed in the future.  As a result, Congress created Exemption 3 of the FOIA which incorporates the protection afforded by other laws into the FOIA.  This category of information is the only one of the FOIA’s nine exemptions which expressly references other federal laws.

Because the use of Exemption 3 relies on knowledge of various other federal laws, OIP has compiled two key resources to assist agencies in their administration of the FOIA and to increase public understanding of the use of Exemption 3.  These materials, located on the FOIA Resources page of our site, are:

• Statutes Found to Qualify Under Exemption 3 of the FOIA – Recently updated, this is a list of statutes that federal courts have found to qualify under Exemption 3.  Complied to assist agencies in properly processing FOIA requests and aid the public in understanding the scope of this exemption, the list provides the statute citation and name (if applicable), the type of information protected by the statute and the case citation for the case in which a court found that the statute qualified for use with Exemption 3.
• Statutes used in Annual FOIA Reports in conjunction with Exemption 3 of the FOIA – As the statutes used in connection with Exemption 3 and the frequency of use varies by agency, OIP compiles these charts which list the statutes used by all agencies as reported in their Annual FOIA Reports.  Collected from the reports for fiscal years 2010 and 2011, the charts provide the citation of the statute used, the type of information which is protected by the statute, and the agencies which cited the statute when using Exemption 3, as well as the number of times the statue was cited.

Information on the use of Exemption 3 by agencies prior to fiscal year 2010 and a more complete breakdown of the use of this exemption by any agency components is available in agency Annual FOIA Reports on the Reports page of our site (fiscal years 1998-2011) and on FOIA.gov (fiscal years 2008-2011).

In order to ensure proper implementation of the FOIA and its exemptions, OIP has also issued guidance on the use of Exemption 3 as changes to the statute have occurred, most recently when Congress passed the OPEN FOIA Act of 2009.  This, and all guidance issued by OIP, is available on the OIP Guidance page of our site.

Finally, if any agency has questions about the application of a federal statute in connection with Exemption 3, they can contact OIP’s FOIA Counselor Service at (202) 514-FOIA (3642) and one of OIP’s FOIA Counselors will be available to provide individualized guidance.