The FOIA Ombudsman

OGIS will offer an all-day Dispute Resolution Skills for FOIA Professionals training program on Monday December 3, 2012, at the National Archives building in Washington, D.C. While we’ve offered this training program — which equips FOIA professionals with practical communications and dispute resolution skills — for nearly three years, this session will be a little [...]

Experienced FOIA requesters can attest that FOIA requests follow a well-established process: a requester submits a request; the agency responds to that request; if the requester is dissatisfied with the response, he/she submits an administrative appeal; the agency responds to the appeal. Before OGIS opened in 2009, a requester who remained dissatisfied after the agency [...]

Both the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Privacy Act  contain provisions that grant a right of access to Federal records. Hear from government experts in both fields about The Intersection of the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act at the next FOIA Requester Roundtable on October 24, 2012. OGIS, along with the [...]

Conflict Resolution Week is October 15-19, 2012. To help celebrate, the federal Interagency Alternative Dispute Resolution Working Group is sponsoring a number of events. OGIS is pleased to be part of that celebration by offering the upcoming brown bag meeting/teleconference, “Dispute Resolution’s Impact on the FOIA Framework.” If you are interested in how OGIS is using [...]

We at OGIS are always looking for ways to streamline our procedures and we’ve encouraged your input. This time is no different as we seek your support in ginning up some mojo for an OGIS routine use! Yes, an OGIS routine use, as in a Privacy Act system of records routine use. Without getting too technical (or [...]

Note: This year’s International Right to Know Day is September 28, 2012. OGIS Director Miriam Nisbet marks the day with the following post about a recent meeting with right-to-know advocates from around the globe. Last month, I had the opportunity to participate in several events Down Under, where the talk was all about access to [...]

  Interested in making a FOIA request for government records, but don’t know where to start? If so, we’ve got the resource for you! The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform just released a report titled The Citizen’s Guide to Using the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act of 1974 to Request [...]

We at OGIS talk a lot about the importance of teamwork. Though we mostly think about teamwork improving everyday agency processes (such as FOIA) so that they run more smoothly, we recently heard about a cross-agency team recognizing a small opportunity and turning it into a big reward. Between 1946 and 1995, the Immigration and [...]

The FOIA process, as with much in life, provides an opportunity to give our actions a second look. After all, most of us don’t file a major report without asking someone to proofread for errors, right? Or walk out the door without one last check in the mirror? FOIA directs that requesters can appeal “any [...]

It’s back-to-school time—you can practically hear the rumbling of school buses and smell the new No. 2 pencils. As students across the country turn their focus from the swimming pool and summer camp toward reading, writing and ‘rithmetic, what better time for us to revisit some FOIA requester basics? FOIA requesters frequently contact OGIS for [...]