Customer Service: Agency Review
“The Office of Government Information Services shall review policies and procedures of administrative agencies under this section; [and] review compliance with this section by administrative agencies.”
The Freedom of Information Act
5 U.S.C § 552(h)(2)(A)-(B)
OGIS has devised a cost-effective way to start implementing the second prong of its statutory mission—to review agencies’ FOIA policies, procedures, and compliance—by analyzing existing data and using available resources. The process that OGIS developed to begin to implement this part of its mission includes
- Reviewing proposed changes to agency FOIA regulations
- Collaborating with Federal agencies in developing changes to
FOIA regulations, policies, and practices - Analyzing agencies’ Annual FOIA Reports and Chief FOIA Officer
Reports and observing agency practices through casework
to develop Government-wide Best Practices.
In FY 2011, OGIS submitted public comments to proposed changes to the FOIA regulations of the
- Department of Defense
- Department of Justice
- Department of Transportation
- Department of Veterans Affairs
- Federal Housing Finance Agency
- Financial Stability Oversight Council
OGIS also publicly commented on proposed changes to a form used by requesters seeking their own or third-party records from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; the agency incorporated OGIS’s suggestions.
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Best Practices: Collaboration and Coordination OGIS has observed that when agencies collaborate and coordinate on FOIA requests, FOIA has a greater chance of working as intended. In its day-to-day casework, OGIS bridges requesters and agencies; just as important is linking FOIA professionals to the custodians of the requested documents, information technology professionals, records managers, FOIA attorneys, and in cases involving referrals and consultations, FOIA professionals in other agencies. OGIS encourages all FOIA professionals to build alliances with their counterparts in other agencies as well as their non-FOIA colleagues within their agencies. Such cooperation eases the records search and positions agencies to be ready to tackle any request. In some agencies, including the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Federal Trade Commission, and Federal Labor Relations Board, FOIA and IT professionals regularly work together on FOIA matters. At Amtrak, FOIA and IT professionals have set up conference calls with requesters to discuss requests. Information technology professionals at the Surface Transportation Board work with the agency's FOIA officer to write detailed instructions for performing efficient and thorough electronic searches. Office of the U.S. Trade Representative FOIA professionals meet regularly with other offices within the Executive Office of the President to see if similar FOIA requests have been received and if a coordinated response might be warranted. At the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), FOIA offices with no backlogs provide processing support for other NASA components with backlogs. |
In what OGIS hopes will become a widely accepted practice throughout the executive branch, OGIS collaborated with the Department of the Interior and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in reviewing existing and newly written FOIA regulations. OGIS shared many of its Best Practices with both entities to ensure that the regulations were written clearly, explained the FOIA administrative process, and provided information pertaining to OGIS and its services. OGIS is pleased to learn that as a result of this collaboration, the CFPB incorporated several OGIS suggestions into its final FOIA regulations.
OGIS continues to regularly update its Best Practices Chart, available on OGIS’s web site. OGIS incorporated many of the best practices it identified in reviewing agencies’ Chief FOIA Officer Reports and in offering mediation services into both its inter- and intra-agency dispute-resolution skills training programs. The discussion of best practices in these training programs helped OGIS clarify existing best practices and develop new ones.
These steps are building blocks for the robust review strategy that OGIS envisions to implement fully this aspect of its mission. The Office is collaborating with the National Archives’ Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), which oversees Government and industry security classification programs, to explore ways to create an OGIS assessment program that will fulfill this part of its mission. OGIS hopes to launch its first such assessment in Fiscal Year 2012.
