Agencies Post their 2015 Chief FOIA Officer Reports during Sunshine Week

Over the course of Sunshine Week this week, agencies across the government began posting their 2015 Chief FOIA Officer Reports. Since the issuance of Attorney General Holder’s FOIA Guidelines in 2009, agency Chief FOIA Officers have reported to the Justice Department annually on their efforts towards improving the administration of the FOIA at their agencies. Over the last six years, these Chief FOIA Officer Reports have served as a valuable resource for agencies to detail their efforts in implementing the President’s and Attorney General’s FOIA Memoranda. On Monday, the Department of Justice released its 2015 Chief FOIA Officer Report and a compilation of success stories from other agency reports.

Each year, agency Chief FOIA Officer Reports illustrate the steps undertaken by agencies to improve their administration of the FOIA and to implement the five key areas of FOIA administration addressed in Attorney General Holder’s FOIA Guidelines. These five areas are:  applying the presumption of openness; ensuring that there are effective systems in place for responding to requests; increasing proactive disclosures; increasing the utilization of technology; and improving timeliness and reducing backlogs.

The Justice Department’s 2015 Report released this week details a range of initiatives for each of these areas, including:

• Leading the efforts to further modernize FOIA through a number of commitments made in the United States' Second Open Government National Action Plan. These initiatives include working on a consolidated online FOIA service, developing common FOIA regulations and practices for federal agencies, improving internal agency FOIA processes across the government by leveraging best practices, improving FOIA training by making standard e-learning resources available for all federal employees, and participating in a FOIA Federal Advisory Committee.
• The Department also continued to expand its robust FOIA training program in an effort to provide quality FOIA training and resources to all federal employees. OIP's FOIA instructors provided training on a range of topics to over a thousand federal employees across the government. OIP also released a new suite of four electronically available FOIA training tools designed for all levels of the federal workforce from the senior executive whose support is key, to agency program personnel, to the FOIA professionals who process records. This new collection of training tools helps ensure that all agencies have a ready set of targeted resources to make available to all their employees.
• The Department proactively posted more information to its websites, and continued to post that information in ways that are most useful to the public. The Department's FOIA.gov website continues to be a central resource for all FOIA data and resources. With Fiscal Year 2014 Annual FOIA Report data now on the website, users can compare agencies' FOIA administration from this past fiscal year across agencies and over time. The other features on the site, such as videos about the FOIA and how it works, and FOIA contact information for all 100 agencies, continues to also serve as a valuable resource for the public.

As agencies post their 2015 Chief FOIA Officer Reports, we encourage you to review them to find out more about the various FOIA efforts undertaken by government agencies this past year.  OIP will once again provide a central link to these reports on our website as they become available.

As with last year’s Reports, OIP will begin its five-part series in the coming weeks here on FOIA Post to highlight agency achievements and initiatives in each of the five key areas addressed by the Attorney General’s FOIA Guidelines. Additionally, OIP will once again publish an assessment of agencies’ implementation of the President's and Attorney General's FOIA Memoranda based on agency Annual and Chief FOIA Officer Reports.  Be sure to continue reading FOIA Post for more information.