FOIA News: Chief FOIA Officers Tech Committee releases charter

Chief FOIA Officers Council Technology Committee Working Group Charters Now Available

Dep’t of Justice, Office of Info. Pol’y, FOIA Post (Feb. 17, 2021), https://www.justice.gov/oip/blog/chief-foia-officers-council-technology-committee-working-group-charters-now-available

The Chief FOIA Officers (CFO) Council Technology Committee, established to study the use of technology in FOIA programs across agencies and identify best practices and recommendations, has finalized the charters for its working groups.  The Technology Committee consists of approximately 40 members from 25 agencies.  In 2020, the Technology Committee established seven interagency working groups comprised of Committee members covering the following topics:

• Artificial Intelligence

• Video Review and Redaction

• FOIAXpress

• FOIAonline

• FOIA and Classified Information

• 508 Compliance and Collaborative Tools

• FOIA Search

Each working group developed a charter to describe its objectives and proposed deliverables.  Target milestones in each charter are subject to change.  These charters are now available on OIP's CFO Council page.  Stay tuned to FOIA Post for future updates on the work of the CFO Council and the Technology Committee. 

FOIA News: ASAP announces topics for its 2021 national training conference

The American Society of Access Professionals has published a list of twenty-two topics under consideration for its national training conference, which will be held virtually from May 25 to May 27. The final program is dependent on instructor availability and budgetary constraints.

FOIA News: FCC updates its fee schedule

The Federal Communications Commission has issued a public notice modifying its fee schedule to reflect the hourly rates of pay in effect for 2021. Copy charges remain the same at ten cents per page, as do the costs of computer disks at five dollars.

FOIA News: Nominate a government employee for a FOIA award

NOMINATIONS FOR THE 2021 SUNSHINE WEEK FOIA AWARDS ARE OPEN - NOMINATE YOUR FOIA PROFESSIONALS BY MARCH 1, 2021

By DOJ/OIP, FOIA Post, Feb. 17, 2021

The Department of Justice, Office of Information Policy (OIP) is pleased to announce that nominations are open for the 2021 Sunshine Week FOIA Awards, recognizing the contributions of FOIA professionals from around the government.  As the Supreme Court declared, “[t]he basic purpose of [the] FOIA is to ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society . . . ”  Agency FOIA professionals are vital to ensuring that the important purpose of this law is fulfilled and we are pleased and honored to celebrate the work of these individuals from around the government.  For this year’s event, OIP is seeking nominations for five categories of awards:

• Exceptional Service by a FOIA Professional or Team of FOIA Professionals

• Outstanding Contributions by a New Employee

• Exceptional Advancements in IT to Improve the Agency’s FOIA Administration

• Exceptional Advancements in Proactive Disclosure of Information

• Lifetime Service Award

Nominations can be submitted by agencies or by a member of the public. All nominations are due to OIP by Monday, March 1st.

Read more here.

FOIA News: Veterans Affairs posts annual FOIA report for 2020

The Department of Veterans Affairs has issued its annual FOIA report for fiscal year 2020, joining Transportation and Commerce as the only cabinet agencies to release their reports thus far. A few highlights from VA’s report:

• Received 19,053 requests (a decrease of 10% from 2019) and processed 19, 323 requests.

• Received 369 appeals and processed 432 appeals.

• Backlogged requests rose from 2491 in 2019 to 3220 in 2020, a nearly 30% increase.

• Granted all 184 requests for a public interest fee waiver.

• Expended $16,460, 304 in non-litigation costs and collected $41,221 in fees, or one quarter of one percent.

FOIA News: CJR bemoans FOIA under Trump; heralds remarkable FOIA results

What the Trump administration meant for freedom of information requests

By Philip Eil , Columbia Journalism Rev., Feb. 15, 2021

* * *

Trump came into office with the FOIA bar already low. The Obama administration, despite lofty campaign rhetoric about transparency and a first-day-in-office memo urging agencies to “adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure,” set records for FOIA non-compliance and was caught at one point—by a FOIA lawsuit, naturally—contradicting its public posture by lobbying against FOIA reform behind closed doors. Thus, as MuckRock co-founder Michael Morisy put it, comparing Obama and Trump’s transparency records is a case study in “setting high expectations and then failing to meet them in some really critical ways versus setting some really low expectations and delivering what folks expected.”

Read more here.

FOIA News: FOIA attorney jobs available at DOJ

The Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, Executive Office for Immigration Review, and Office of Information Policy each seek to hire FOIA/Privacy Act lawyers. See the Antitrust Division’s vacancy announcement here; EOIR’s announcement here; and OIP’s announcement here.

FOIA News: GAO releases Exemption 3 report

Today the Government Accountability Office released a report concerning agency use of Exemption 3. GAO found that between fiscal years 2010 and 2019, 91 agencies reported withholding information using at least one of FOIA’s 256 Exemption 3 statutes a total of more than 525,000 times. Additionally,GAO found that use of Exemption 3 more than doubled from fiscal year 2012 to fiscal year 2019, while the number of FOIA requests processed increased 32 percent.

FOIA News: More 2020 annual reports available

A number of agencies have posted their fiscal year 2020 annual reports online. See list below. Agencies were required to submit their reports to the Department of Justice by November 11, 2020. The agencies’ deadline for posting reports on their websites is March 1, 2021. DOJ will also post the reports here.

• U.S. Department of Commerce

• Central Intelligence Agency

• General Services Administration

• National Labor Relations Board

• U.S. Agency for International Development

• Federal Communications Commission

• Securities and Exchange Commission

• Nuclear Regulatory Commission

• Commodity Futures Trading Commission

• National Aeronautics and Space Administration

• U.S. Trade Representative

• Postal Regulatory Commission

• Federal Reserve System

• National Mediation Board

• Export-Import Bank

• Office of Government Ethics

FOIA News: Round-Up of Recent Stories

• Brian Kutner, CIA Can Shield Records on Syrian Rebel Funding, Courthouse News (Feb. 9, 2021)
  
  Twitter may have banned former President Donald Trump, but his disruptive use of the platform is still being argued in court.  

  On Tuesday morning, the D.C. Circuit sided with the CIA in a dispute involving a Freedom of Information Act request from BuzzFeed stemming from a Trump tweet.
  

• 2nd Cir. Says Judges Can Order Public Posting of FOIA Docs, Law360 (Feb. 5, 2021)
  
  A split Second Circuit on Friday ruled that the Freedom of Information Act authorizes courts to order the public posting of hidden government documents — a victory for a legal service provider seeking the online publication of 750,000 immigration appeals decisions. In a precedential 2-1 decision, the appeals court revived New York Legal Assistance Group’s suit seeking to make available to the general public every unpublished, or nonprecedential, U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals decision issued since 1996, as well as any future ones.
  
  (Article paywalled)