FOIA News: Remarks at DOJ's Sunshine Week event

Acting Associate Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer Delivers Remarks at 14th Annual Sunshine Week Event

Dep’t of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, Mar. 11, 2024

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Welcome to the Justice Department’s 14th Annual Sunshine Week event. I am so pleased to kick off this important week for those of us who believe that our democracy functions best when the public knows what its government is doing. Sunshine Week is an opportunity to honor the public servants — like so many of you here — who work tirelessly to administer FOIA. But it is also an opportunity to recommit ourselves to the broader principles of openness, transparency, and accountability that FOIA serves.

For more than 50 years, FOIA has been a vital tool for advancing these core democratic principles. Two years ago, the Attorney General reaffirmed the government’s commitment to those principles by issuing comprehensive new FOIA guidelines. The 2022 guidelines direct the heads of all executive branch departments and agencies to apply a presumption of openness in administering FOIA: “In case of doubt,” the guidelines instruct, “openness should prevail.” The guidelines make clear that the Justice Department will not defend nondisclosure decisions that fail to apply such a presumption. And, finally, the guidelines emphasize the importance of making proactive disclosures, removing barriers to accessing government information, and reducing FOIA processing backlogs.

Read more here.

FOIA News: The worst agency responses of 2023

The Foilies 2024

Muckrock, Mar. 10. 2024

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The Foilies are our attempt to call out . . .violations each year during Sunshine Week, an annual event (March 10-16 this year) when advocacy groups, news organizations and citizen watchdogs combine efforts to highlight the importance of government transparency laws. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and MuckRock, in partnership with the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, compile the year’s worst and most ridiculous responses to public records requests and other attempts to thwart public access to information, including through increasing attempts to gut the laws guaranteeing this access—and we issue these agencies and officials tongue-in-cheek “awards” for their failures.

Read more here.

FOIA News: With FOIA backlogs on the rise, do agencies need direct-hire authority?

With FOIA backlogs on the rise, do agencies need direct-hire authority?

By Justin Doubleday, Federal News Network, Mar. 7, 2024

With Freedom of Information Act backlogs continuing to rise, a federal advisory committee is advancing some potential solutions to the FOIA staffing challenges that have plagued many agencies.

The FOIA Advisory Committee, during a March 5 meeting, discussed a draft report on “staffing/personnel” from the resources subcommittee.

Read more here.

FOIA News: FOIA Advisory Committee meeting

In case you missed it, the federal FOIA Advisory Committee met on Tuesday, March 5, 2024. Here is a replay of the action, as well as the meeting materials. The Committee will meet next on April 4, 2024.

FOIA News: OIP releases 2023 Litigation and Compliance Report

On March 4, 2024, the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy released its 2023 Litigation and Compliance Report. Among other things, DOJ reported that requesters filed 834 FOIA lawsuits in 2023. a four percent increase from 797 claims in 2022 .

FOIA News: Agencies received nearly 1.2 million requests in FY 2023

According to updated data posted on Foia.gov, agencies received 1,199,644 requests in fiscal year 2023, a whopping 29 percent increase from 928,353 in FY 2022. The Department of Homeland Security alone received 674,856 of those requests, or 56 percent, which is on par with recent years.

Further, agencies collectively processed 1,122,166 requests, a 27 percent increase from 878,420 requests processed in FY 2022.

The government’s request backlog increased slightly from 206,720 in FY 2022 to 208,282 in FY 2023. The appeals backlog decreased slightly from 4,709 to 4,646.

Total FOIA costs were $659,719,904, with $610,629,248 in administrative costs and $49,090,656 in litigation costs, all of which were higher than in FY 2022 ($585 million total). Only $2,333,293 in fees were collected from requesters, but this was higher than in FY 2022 ($2,192,645).

FOIA News: NARA posts annual FOIA reports; requests quadruple

The National Archives and Records Administration has released its annual FOIA report for fiscal year 2023. Here is a summary of the key data:

• Requests received: 62,505, an increase of 317 percent from 14,975 in FY 2022.

• Requests processed: 66,064, an increase of 341 percent from 14,977 in FY 2022.

• Backlog of requests: 6,410, a 35.7 percent decline from 9,969 in FY 2022.

• Appeals received: 121, an increase of 49 percent from 81 in FY 2022.

• Appeals processed: 64, an increase of 190 percent from 22 in FY 2022.

• Backlog of appeals: 224, an increase of 44.5 percent from 155 in FY 2022.

• Total costs: $1,688,400, with administrative costs of $1,632,400, and litigation costs of $56k. Total costs in FY 2023 were 9.6 percent higher than in FY 2022 ($1,540,000).

• Processing time: The median processing time for all perfected, “complex” requests was 897 days.

FOIA News: Pentagon releases annual FOIA report; requests escalate

The Department of Defense has posted its annual FOIA report for fiscal year 2023. Below is a summary of the key data.

• Requests received: 60,109, up 11.3 percent from 54,004 in FY2022.

• Requests processed: 55,731, a 6.7 percent increase from 52,222 in FY 2022.

• Backlog of requests: 19,882, up 7 percent from 18,567 in FY 2022.

• Appeals received: 1,108, a decrease of 11.5 percent from 1,252 in FY 2022.

• Appeals processed: 1,247, a decrease of less than 1 percent from 1,257 in FY 2022.

• Backlog of appeals: 736, a 14.6 percent decline from 862 in FY 2022.

• Total costs: $90,06 million, with $85.61 million in administrative costs and $4.45 million in litigation costs. The total costs in FY 2023 were 8.6 percent lower than in FY 2022 ($98.6 million).

• Processing time: Notable laggards include the National Security Agency and Cyber Command, whose median processing times for “complex” requests were 966 days and 652.5 days, respectively—well above the agency overall time of 48.50 median days.

FOIA News: Daniel Metcalfe, co-founder of DOJ/OIP, dead at 72

FOIA Advisor has learned that Daniel Metcalfe, a Freedom of Information Act luminary for the past five decades, died last month at the age of 72. Dan co-founded the Department of Justice’s Office of Information and Privacy with Richard Huff in November 1981. After Mr. Huff retired in 2005, Dan led OIP as Director until his own retirement in January 2007. He subsequently established and ran the Collaboration on Government Secrecy, an educational project devoted to transparency, at the American University Washington College of Law. In 2023, Dan published a book, Inside Justice: Secrecy at Work, which chronicles his FOIA career and addresses numerous transparency issues.

FOIA News: Judicial Watch Settles State Department Lawsuit that Uncovered Hillary Clinton’s Unsecure, Nongovernment Emails

Judicial Watch Settles State Department Lawsuit that Uncovered Hillary Clinton’s Unsecure, Nongovernment Emails

Judicial Watch, Feb. 27, 2024

Judicial Watch announced today it settled its 2014 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, which sought the emails of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding the Benghazi attack. This suit led directly to the disclosure of Clinton’s use of a nongovernment email server to conduct government business (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242). The settlement commits the State Department to a payment to Judicial Watch of $97,000.

Read more here.