Archive for October, 2011
No Treat for Papering Agencies
If you’ve been a FOIA professional long enough, you’ve been papered. It makes one feel like the homeowner who discovers a toilet-papered yard the morning after Halloween – all trick, no treat. For FOIA professionals who haven’t been papered, here’s how it works: a requester will flood email inboxes, mail boxes and yes, even fax [...]
Posted by Kirsten Mitchell on October 28, 2011, under About FOIA, Best practices.
Comments: 2
Tips on Getting Down to Business
FOIA’s Exemption 4 protects from disclosure commercial and financial information provided to the government by individuals and a wide range of entities – from corporations and banks to Native American tribes. The idea is to safeguard certain private business records in government files. About two dozen representatives of the agency and requester communities participated in [...]
Posted by Kirsten Mitchell on October 21, 2011, under About FOIA, Best practices, OGIS events.
Comments: none
OPM Seeks Agency Comment on New FOIA Job Series
We’re pleased that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) recently proposed a new job series that would cover Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) professionals. OPM has asked Federal agencies to submit comments regarding the draft Position Classification for the proposed job series by October 31st. In a nutshell, OPM proposes an occupational series, GS-0306, titled [...]
Posted by Karen Finnegan on October 19, 2011, under About FOIA.
Comments: none
Reaching Out
Coinciding nicely with the recent convening of the Open Government Partnership, a global effort to make governments more transparent, effective and accountable, OGIS Director Miriam Nisbet is privileged to have traveled to China recently to meet with government officials and university faculty and students in conjunction with Yale Law School’s China Law Center. The context [...]
Posted by Kirsten Mitchell on October 14, 2011, under About OGIS.
Comments: none
Gather ’Round
Interested in contractor and other business-related records in the FOIA context? OGIS and the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy are gearing up to host the next FOIA Requester Roundtable from 10 a.m. to noon Wednesday Oct. 19, 2011. The roundtable will be at OIP, 1425 New York Ave. NW, Suite 11050, Washington DC, [...]
Posted by Corinna Zarek on October 12, 2011, under OGIS events.
Comments: none
Onward and Upward!
After two years of providing mediation services and working to improve the FOIA process, it’s time for self examination. During the last two years we’ve focused on figuring out how to do what we do while we were doing it. Our customers and stakeholders have provided valuable feedback regarding how we’ve helped them and how [...]
Posted by Karen Finnegan on October 6, 2011, under About OGIS.
Comments: none
