Sunshine Week 2012 marked the third anniversary of Attorney General Holder’s FOIA Guidelines.  These Guidelines highlighted the important role played by agency Chief FOIA Officers and asked that these officials report each year on their efforts to improve FOIA administration and implement the presumption of openness at their agencies.

As noted in The Justice Blog, “these Chief FOIA Officer Reports allow agencies to outline and describe the wide variety of concrete steps undertaken to implement the Attorney General’s [FOIA] Guidelines, many of which are unquantifiable through the statistical annual reporting.”  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.  Additionally, the reports also provide a vehicle for agencies to describe the innovative ways they are releasing information to the public proactively.

In addition to providing a central location for all posted 2012 Chief FOIA Officer Reports from all federal departments and agencies, we have compiled a selection of success stories from across federal departments from the last year.  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.