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POLICY ISSUE
(INFORMATION)

SECY-07-0019

January 26, 2007

• PURPOSE
• BACKGROUND
• DISCUSSION

PURPOSE:

This paper conveys to the Commission a copy of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) annual Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Report for fiscal year (FY) 2006.

BACKGROUND:

With the enactment of the Electronic FOIA Amendments of 1996, Public Law 104-231, 101 Stat. 3048, Congress revised Subsection (e) of the FOIA, which pertains to the submission of annual FOIA reports by Federal agencies. Congress directed the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), in consultation with the Office of Management and Budget, to issue guidelines for Federal agencies to use in preparing and submitting their annual FOIA reports.

Under the guidelines, Federal agencies are to send their annual reports to the DOJ Office of Information and Privacy and include in their reports the agency-specific uniform resource locator (URL) for Web-based access to their report. DOJ provides a single point of access on its Web site for all annual FOIA reports, through a link to each agency's FOIA page, and notifies Congress when all reports have been posted on the agency's Web site.

DISCUSSION:

Enclosed is the NRC's Annual FOIA Report for FY 2006. Section VIII (page 7) of the enclosed report compares NRC's FY 2006 data to FY 2005. The median number of days for pending FOIA requests decreased significantly from 94 in FY 2005 to 15 at the close of FY 2006. This 84 percent decrease was achieved by closing several requests with thousands of pages that had been open for more than a year, driving up the number of days in FY 2005. The percent of change from FY 2004 to FY 2005 was an increase of 74 percent (from 54 to 94) because of those cases. With those cases closed, staff was able to focus on other requests. A reduction in the number of incoming requests from 371 in FY 2005 to 320 in FY 2006 also enabled staff to focus on older cases.

The NRC staff will submit the enclosed annual FOIA report for FY 2006 to the DOJ Office of Information and Privacy and place the report on the NRC's public Web site by February 1, 2007. The URL for the NRC's annual FOIA report for FY 2006 will be http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/foia/foia-privacy.html.

The DOJ's Office of Information and Privacy has requested additional information due to the issuance of Executive Order 13392, "Improving Agency Disclosure of Information." The staff included the requested information in Section XII of this report.

Enclosures:

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Annual FOIA Report: FY 2006

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