FOIA Advisor

FOIA News: State Dep't extends efforts to reduce FOIA backlog

FOIA News (2015-2023)Allan Blutstein1 Comment

Tillerson’s ‘FOIA surge’ extended in another blow to morale 

The State Department has extended by 90 days a tedious push to clear a public records backlog that has pulled in some longtime employees "against their will."

By Nahal Toes, Politico, Jan. 18, 2018

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is extending by 90 days his unusual effort to clear the State Department’s huge backlog of public records requests—a project that has saddled some career diplomats and civil servants with mundane clerical tasks that they call demoralizing and possibly even designed to make them quit.

The decision was announced in a Jan. 5 email to State officials that was shown to POLITICO. It comes as conservative groups such as Judicial Watch continue to press the department to release more of former Secretary of State’s Hillary Clinton’s emails under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.

Read more here.