FOIA News: FOIA workshop on Sept. 30, 2021

Beryl Lipton, an investigative journalist, will be leading an online FOIA workshop free of charge on September 20, 2021, at noon. The magazine Jewish Currents is organizing the training, entitled “Using FOIA: A Workshop for Activism, Scholarship, and Publication,” which is co-sponsored by The Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Register here.

FOIA News, ICYMI, Agriculture Secretary Vilsack thanks FOIA personnel

Secretary Tom Vilsack hailed the “outstanding” FOIA work of USDA in a department-wide letter sent on September 10, 2021.

USDA: Thank you FOIA professionals and information aggregators

Colleagues, 

I would like to highlight the outstanding work of USDA’s Freedom of Information Act professionals. Since 1967, the FOIA has provided the public the right to request access to records from any federal agency. It is often described as the law that keeps citizens in the know about their government. At USDA, we are committed to ensuring transparency and trust with the public. Although the USDA community has a number of full-time FOIA professionals, there are also many staff members performing FOIA functions across the country in addition to other assigned duties. This is testament to the shared responsibility and dedication towards this priority. I applaud the teams’ hard work and diligent effort to respond promptly to FOIA requests, to adapt a presumption in favor of disclosure, and to provide exemplary customer service for the tens of thousands of requesters seeking records annually.  

Read more here.

FOIA News: The FOIA Project expands its brief bank

The FOIA Project Expands its Brief Bank with Hundreds of Immigration-Related Court Documents

By Kristen Matteucci, Jenkins Law, Sept. 14, 2021

Did you know that the FOIA Project (FOIAproject.org) has a Brief Bank that collects “substantive briefs, motions, and testimony related to FOIA cases”?

The FOIA Project aims to “provide the public with timely and complete information about every instance in which the federal government grants or withholds records” requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). To that end, the project houses court dockets, complaints, opinions, and orders issued in FOIA lawsuits and FOIA appeals - brought in the U.S. district courts and the U.S. circuit courts, respectively - which challenge government withholding of requested information.

Read more here.

FOIA News: FBI deactivates records feed on Twitter

FOIA News: Record collections of the 9/11 attacks

FBI

9/11 Commission

Fed. Aviation Admin.

Natl. Inst. of Standards & Tech.

George W. Bush Pres. Library

Library of Congress

9/11 Memorial & Museum

FOIA News: FOIA Advisory Committee meeting on Sept. 9, 2021

The FOIA Advisory Committee will meet on Thursday, September 9, 2021, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The meeting agenda, live stream link, and presentation material are available here.

FOIA News: Cloud can help speed FOIA response

Cloud can help speed FOIA response

By Stephanie Kanowitz, GCN, Sept. 7, 2021

The backlog of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests has grown during the pandemic. The Justice Department reports that the number of backlogged requests across federal agencies in fiscal 2020 was 141,762, compared to about 120,000 the year before. The disparate systems that shaped agencies’ quick shift from office to remote work is largely to blame, one expert says.

“In many cases the data that they’re receiving, generating [and] creating is remaining local to the employees instead of on an enterprise system,” said Bill Tolson, vice president of compliance and e-discovery at Archive 360. That makes it difficult for an agency to respond to a FOIA request that involves numerous agency employees with disparate data repositories. “We’ve found instances where many of the employees were storing agency material up in their personal cloud accounts because they had nowhere else to put it.”

Read more here.

FOIA News: OIP updates FOIA Guide

On August 20, 2021, the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy posted an updated version of the Procedural Requirements section of the Guide to the Freedom of Information Act.

FOIA News: OGIS assessment of first-party requests

On August 30, 2021, the Office of Government Information Services released an assessment of “common categories of records requested frequently under the FOIA and/or Privacy Act by – or on behalf of – individuals seeking records about themselves.” In sum, OGIS recommended that agencies “examine closely all of the records that they generate, collect and/or maintain and seek creative ways to provide non-FOIA access to first-party records when possible.” It also recommended that “agencies use their websites to explain, in plain language, the steps requesters should take to obtain access to first-party records.”

FOIA News: Reporters Committee on Recent DC Circuit Decisions

DC Circuit issues two notable FOIA decisions

By Gabe Rottman, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Aug. 30, 2021

Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued decisions in two cases involving the government’s withholding of records or information under the Freedom of Information Act. While the government’s asserted rationale for withholding in each of the two cases differed, in both instances the appellate court affirmed holdings in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia finding that the information in question could be withheld.

In the first of the decisions, issued last Tuesday, the appellate court upheld the National Security Agency’s withholding of a 2017 memorandum memorializing a conversation between former President Donald Trump and NSA Director Michael Rogers in a FOIA lawsuit brought by Protect Democracy. The court found the memo properly withheld under the FOIA exemption incorporating executive privilege, and refused to recognize a “misconduct” exception advanced by plaintiffs.

Read more here.