Q. The Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of General Counsel acknowledged receipt of my FOIA appeal in September 2018, but I have not heard back since. Would this case still be active or valid? What, if any, recourse do I have at this point? Do I need to start the request process over and see what the agency sends me, and then go through the appeals process again if it is incomplete?

A. Your FOIA appeal should still be pending, so you can either continue to wait for a determination, contact the department and inquire about its status, ask for assistance from the National Archives’ Office of Government Information Services, or file a lawsuit.  Note that the General Counsel’s office took an average of 72 days and as long as 746 days to respond to its administrative appeals, according to the department’s 2018 annual FOIA report.