FOIA News: Annual reports, where art ye?

Five agencies that typically receive the most FOIA requests annually, DHS, DOJ, DOD, NARA, and Veteran Affairs, have not yet published their annual reports due on March 1st. Additionally, the government’s central website for FOIA has not been update to include annual date for fiscal year 2024. We’ll keep you updated.

FOIA News: CFO tech committee issues white paper

New White Paper on FOIA Data from Chief FOIA Officer Council Technology Committee’s Working Group

BY DOJ/OIP, FOIA Post, Feb. 24, 2025

A white paper issued by the Chief FOIA Officer (CFO) Council Technology Committee’s Data Working Group (DWG) has been posted to FOIA.gov.  The white paper summarizes the DWG’s work, which included interviews with other FOIA programs to gain a better understanding of how they utilize data in managing their operations and how FOIA programs respond to FOIA requests for data.

Read more here.

FOIA News: HHS posts FY 2024 FOIA report

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has published its annual FOIA report for fiscal year 2024. Below are the significant metrics.

• 51,800 requests received, up 11.3 percent from 46,530 requests received in FY 2023.

• 49,271 requests processed, up 4.5 percent from 47,038 requests processed in FY 2023

• 12,685 requests in backlogged status, a 12.6 percent increase from 11,256 backlogged requests in FY 2023.

• 730 appeals in backlogged status, up 14 percent from640 backlogged appeals in FY 2023.

• $66.1 million in processing costs and $14.1 million for litigation ($80.2 million in total), more than double the $39.7 million in total costs incurred in FY 2023.

  $752k fees collected for processing requests.

FOIA News: New email language may shield more USAID communications from public view

New email language may shield more USAID communications from public view

By Rebecca Heilweil, FedScoop, Feb. 20, 2025

Emails sent by employees of what remains of USAID now come with new language that could be meant to keep agency communications from public view. 

Two sources at the international development agency confirmed to FedScoop that emails sent from agency staff now contain the language “Sensitive But Unclassified.” The designation is used by federal agencies to denote a heightened responsibility to safeguard information. 

Read more here.

FOIA News: FOIA boot camp on March 4

Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic will host an in-person FOIA bootcamp with three journalists on March 4, 2025. Read more here.

FOIA News: T-minus 10, 9, 8 . . .

Federal agencies have until March 1, 2025 to post their annual FOIA reports for fiscal year 2024. None of the top five active FOIA agencies have posted their reports yet, namely Homeland Security, Justice, Veterans Affairs, National Archives, or Defense. Other departments on the clock include Agriculture, Health & Human Services, Housing & Urban Development, Labor, Transportation, and Treasury.

FOIA News: Layoffs hit privacy/FOIA personnel

CNN Made FOIA Request About DOGE—Only to Learn FOIA Staff Was Fired

"Definitely never seen this type of response to a FOIA request," quipped one journalist.

By Eloise Goldsmith, Common Dreams, Feb. 18, 2025

When CNN put in a Freedom of Information Act request with the Office of Personnel Management for information related to security clearances for billionaire Elon Musk and other personnel at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency who have been allowed access to sensitive or classified government networks, the outlet got an unexpected response.

"Good luck with that, they just fired the whole privacy team," an OPM email address wrote back, according to Tuesday reporting from CNN. An OPM official told the outlet that the federal government's human resources agency did not layoff the entire privacy team, but did not comment further on the matter.

"Definitely never seen this type of response to a FOIA request," quipped CBS News journalist Jim LaPorta reacting to the news on X.

Read more here.

FOIA News: FOIA Advisory Committee meets on March 6th

The federal Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee for the 2024-2026 term will meet on March 6, 2025, from 10 a.m. to noon EST, per a Federal Register notice published by the Office of Government Information Services on February 18, 2025. The leadership of the National Archives and Records Administration, the parent agency of OGIS, was recently forced out by the White House.

FOIA News: EEO-1 reports are exempt, argues gov’t to 9th Circuit

Feds urge Ninth Circuit to keep lid on contractor workforce data

The feds say records sought by an investigative nonprofit are commercial in nature and shouldn't be released.

By Michael Gennaro, Courthouse News Serv., Feb. 14, 2025

Federal lawyers on Friday morning asked a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel to reverse a lower court's decision that it must release data on federal contractors to a San Francisco nonprofit.

The fight is specifically over EEO-1 reports. These reports reflect the breakdown by job classification of a company’s workforce by race, ethnicity, and sex.

The Center for Investigative Reporting, a San Francisco nonprofit news organization that investigates and reports on injustices in the United States, had submitted a Freedom of Information Act for reports from 2016 to 2020.

The federal government notified its employees of the request, and nearly 5,000 objected to the release of their information. The government released the remaining reports to the Center for Investigative Reporting, prompting the organization to sue in 2022 for the rest of them.

A federal judge sided with the Center for Investigative Reporting in 2023, ruling that EEO-1 reports were not exempt from disclosure under FOIA. The government appealed, arguing that they were.

Read more here.

FOIA News: Interview with Ryan Mulvey

The Office of Government Information Services has posted an interview with our own Ryan Mulvey as part of a series of OGIS posts on members of the federal FOIA Advisory Committee. Keep up the excellent work, Ryan!