110th Congress

P.L. 110-175 - The Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National Government Act of 2007

On December 31, 2007, the President signed into law as Public Law 110-175, S. 2488, the Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National Government Act of 2007, to improve access to public documents through the Freedom of Information Act. This law amends the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to revise requirements for federal agency disclosures of information requested under that Act. Provisions of interest to NIH would shorten the time limits on which to act on requests, require agencies to establish a system to assign an individualized tracking number for each request for information, establish a telephone line or Internet service regarding the status of a request, institute additional reporting requirements regarding FOIA requests and processing times, and provides a definition of “a representative of the news media” directly in the statute.