FOIA News: How to keep busy while waiting for a FOIA response

What Can You Do While Waiting for a FOIA Response?

It often takes almost a year or more to get public records from the federal government. Here are some things you can do while you wait.

Matthew Petti, Reason, July 2024 issue

The government is slow, especially at answering questions about itself. In theory, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lets Americans ask any federal agency for any public record and get a response back within 20 days. All 50 states have similar records laws. After all, government documents are the property of the taxpayer.

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Using data from the public records site MuckRock, Reason calculated the average response times for several agencies. It turns out that you can do a lot of fun (and not so fun) things while waiting for bureaucrats to give you the documents that your taxes paid for.

Read more here.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: Weekly report June 17, 2024

Federal positions closing in the next 10 days

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of the Army, GS 7-9, Fort Campbell, KY, closes 6/17/24 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Health & Human Serv./CDC, GS 13, remote, closes 6/17/24 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Def./DHA, GS 7-9, Tripler Army Medical Center, HI, closes 6/18/24 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of the Air Force, GS 9, Ramstein, Germany, closes 6/18/24 (non-public).

Sup. Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Homeland Sec./CIS, GS 12, remote, closes 6/20/24 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of the Treasury/IRS, GS 13, nationwide locations, closes 6/20/24 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of the Air Force/ANG, GS 12, Arlington, VA, closes 6/25/24.

Att’y-Advisor, Dep’t of Justice/OIP, GS 12-15, Washington, D.C, closes 6/27/24.

Federal positions closing on or after July 1, 2024

Sup. Att’y Advisor, Nat’l Labor Relations Bd., GS 15, Wash. DC, closes 7/1/24 (internal to NLRB).

FOIA News: Private emails at NIH trigger another op-ed

For citizens to avoid the Faucian bargain, FOIA reform is needed 

By Curtis Schube & Gary Lawkowski, The Hill, June 14, 2024

Just before Memorial Day, a bombshell report was published that implicated Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. David Morens, one of his senior advisors, for using private emails and phones to avoid public oversight and scrutiny of official activities. Morens even discussed how he would delete messages in order to avoid the discovery of emails.  

There may be no better time than now to talk about reforming how the government collects and provides records.

Read more here.

FOIA News: Peace Corps amends FOIA regs again

The Peace Corps has re-revised its FOIA regulations, per a final rule issued in the Federal Register on June 14, 2024. The agency initially amended its regulations on April 11, 2024. The latest changes remove the gender pronoun “he” when referring to the General Counsel or designee, among other things.

FOIA News: Software company opposes gov't-built request portal

The Government is Not a Software Company: Lessons Learned from the Sunsetting of FOIAOnline

OPEXUS, June 12, 2024

A proposal to revive FOIAOnline, a government-sponsored software solution for handling Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, has sparked interest and debate within the FOIA community. While the concept of a centralized system to address the specific needs of the public sector seems promising, past experiences have revealed significant challenges and complexities. 

FOIAOnline, which was previously sponsored by the EPA, was decommissioned in 2023 after encountering numerous obstacles during its operation. One of the primary issues was its inability to effectively accommodate the diverse and ever-changing requirements of federal agencies while requiring ever-increasing IT resources to support it.  

Read more here.

FOIA News: DOJ's "deepfake" argument is problematic, opines R Street on Hur-Biden audio

Potential for AI Deepfakes Tomorrow Does Not Justify Government Secrecy Today

By Chris McIsaac, R Street Inst., June 13, 2024

Amid an ongoing legal dispute over the public’s right to hear audio recordings of an interview federal investigators conducted with President Joe Biden last year, the administration is pushing a novel theory to support their position that the tapes should be kept secret: fears the recordings could be used to create an artificial intelligence (AI) deepfake. The Department of Justice (DOJ) made this argument as part of a May court filing, and while it does not represent the only rationale for withholding the audio, this line of thinking raises serious concerns around future efforts to shield government records from public disclosure in the age of AI.

Read more here.

FOIA News: FOIA Advisory Committee approves final report & recommendations

The FOIA Advisory Committee unanimously approved—by an 18-0 vote—its final report and sixteen recommendations in its last meeting of the 2022-2024 term held on June 13, 2024. The U.S. Department of Justice, which typically abstains in votes on individual recommendations, voted in favor of the final report. The Committee’s final report, meeting minutes, and meeting transcript will be made available on the OGIS website here.

FOIA News: Reminder of FOIA Advisory Committee meeting

The FOIA Advisory Committee will hold its last meeting of the 2022-2024 term tomorrow, June 13, 2024, at 10am ET. Meeting materials and a livestream link are available here.

FOIA News: IRS defends use of biometric verification for online FOIA filers

IRS defends use of biometric verification for online FOIA filers

By Rebecca Heilweil, FedScoop, June 10, 2024

A few years ago, the Internal Revenue Service announced that it had begun using the identity credential service ID.me for taxpayers to access various online tools. At some point between then and now, the IRS quietly began directing people filing public records requests through its online portal to register for the private biometric verification system.

Though Freedom of Information Act requests to the tax agency can still be filed through FOIA.gov, the mail, by fax, or even in person, the IRS’s decision to point online filers to ID.me — whose facial verification technology has, in the past, drawn scrutiny from Congress — has raised some advocates’ eyebrows.

Read more here.

FOIA News: FOIA Advisory Committee's final report posted for public comment

2022-2024 FOIA Advisory Committee Draft Final Report Available for Public Comment

By Kimberlee N, Ried, FOIA Ombudsman, June 10, 2024

The draft final report of the fifth term of the FOIA Advisory Committee is now available for public comment. The report includes 16 recommendations from the three subcommittees — Implementation, Modernization, and Resources  — all previously approved by the Committee. The Committee will consider and vote on the draft report at its June 13, 2024, meeting, the final of the 2022-2024 term. 

Read more here.