The FOIA Ombudsman

The following guest post is from Ryan Alfred, co-founder and president of BrightScope, a financial data and analytics company, launched in January 2009. Mr. Alfred spoke at the March 30, 2012 Smart Disclosure summit, hosted by the National Archives and the White House, about his experiences using FOIA. By including his post on the FOIA [...]

In last week’s post we discussed the difference between positions and interests. In brief, positions are what an angry person presents during a confrontation; interests are the secret, unmet needs that anyone in a dispute may be reluctant to share. We also learned that the only way to move toward a resolution is to discuss [...]

This week’s guest blogger is Gery Huelseman, Principal Technical Advisor to the Air Force’s Knowledge Ops Branch, National Air & Space Intelligence Center and key member of the OGIS-facilitated FOIA Information Technology Working Group. IT Working Group members will occasionally use the FOIA Ombudsman to share their thoughts on technology solutions. Do you need to [...]

FOIA requests for third-party information present a difficult balancing act for Federal agencies. On Tuesday January 24, OGIS and the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy (OIP) hosted a Requester Roundtable to discuss issues that arise from third-party requests. If you couldn’t make it, we’re here to share some tips. When a requester asks [...]

Throughout 2011, OGIS observed a recurring concept: Federal agencies are succeeding through internal collaboration. This “team approach” to government operations promotes efficiency, reduces redundancy, and helps an agency successfully meet its statutory mandate. One area where teamwork is particularly important is records management; we’ve observed that many agencies are getting wise to this fact. President [...]

Back in May, we posted a recommendation on this blog regarding referrals. We’d recently had several OGIS cases in which agencies making referrals neither identified the name of the agencies to which they referred requests nor offered to assist requesters in determining the status of the referred requests. The requests appeared to have disappeared into [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

OGIS’s outreach is on a roll! This week OGIS staff presented twice to audiences of FOIA requesters as part of the National Archives’ “Know Your Records” series. This was a great opportunity to hear from those in the field – most of whom are not sophisticated FOIA requesters — about their FOIA concerns. While this [...]

FOIA requesters and agency FOIA professionals may not see eye-to-eye on a number of issues. One of these is “still interested?” letters — FOIA shorthand for the letters some agencies send to people with longstanding requests asking if the requester still wants the records. These letters generally require some kind of action on the part [...]