Among all other
agencies, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission topped the list with 426
administrative appeals, followed by the Central Intelligence Agency, with 252,
the United States Postal Service, with 175, and the Social Security Administration,
with 165. On the other hand, no fewer than sixteen agencies reported that they
did not receive any administrative appeals in Fiscal Year 2001, and an additional
twenty-two agencies reported receiving five or fewer appeals during the year.
Median
Number of Days to Process Requests
Four departments
reported that they processed simple requests in twenty or fewer working days,
expressed in agencywide median numbers. One department processed complex requests
in thirty or fewer days. Some departments, such as the Department of Justice,
the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of the Treasury,
did not report a single, agencywide median of the number of days taken to process
requests. These departments are divided into components or subagencies, each
of which handles its own FOIA processing on a decentralized basis and thus reports
its FOIA statistics accordingly. Overall, only 12% of agencies that
used single-track processing reported that their median processing time was
greater than twenty days. Of the agencies that used multitrack processing, all
but six reported a median processing time for complex requests of thirty days
or more.
With respect to
the median number of days that requests were pending as of the end of the fiscal
year, among cabinet-level agencies the Department of Education reported the
lowest number, at twenty-two days. The highest number was the Department of
Energy's, which reported that the median number of days that requests were pending
at that department during fiscal year 2001 was 2009. Only sixteen federal agencies
reported that the median number of days that their requests were pending as
of the end of the year was greater than fifty.
Agency action on
requests for expedited processing also was included in the annual reports. In
total, departments and agencies reported granting requests for expedited processing
more than 50,000 times, with the Department of Veterans Affairs reporting the
highest number of such grants by a very wide margin. The next highest numbers
of such grants were reported by the Department of Labor, the Department of Defense,
the Department of Justice, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
(See also FOIA Post, "Supplemental
Guidance on Annual FOIA Reports" (posted 8/13/01) (specifying that in addition
to reporting the numbers of requests for expedited processing that were granted
during the year, as required by the statute, agencies for future fiscal years
"should to the extent practicable also report the number of requests for expedited
processing that are received each year, in relation to the number granted").
Accordingly, such statistics should be reported and available for compilation
for the next fiscal year.)
Staffing
Levels
A total of 4924.715
employee work-years were devoted to the administration of the FOIA throughout
the federal government during Fiscal Year 2001, a decrease of approximately
455 work-years from Fiscal Year 2000. Among cabinet-level agencies, the Department
of Justice reported the greatest number of FOIA work-years, at 1055.98. The
Department of Defense reported the second-highest number, at 870.77, and the
Department of Veterans Affairs was third highest, at nearly 800. The department
with the smallest number of FOIA employees (expressed in aggregate work-years)
was the Department of Education, with 8.4, followed by the Department of Commerce,
with 27, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, with 39.8.
Among all federal
agencies, fifty-two reported having the equivalent of five or fewer FOIA employees
during the fiscal year. On the other hand, among the noncabinet agencies with
the largest numbers of FOIA employees were the Environmental Protection Agency,
with 191.52, the Social Security Administration, with 147, the Central Intelligence
Agency, with 74.8, the National Archives & Records Administration, with
46.7, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, with 42.93, and the Small
Business Administration, with 33.5.
Costs
In Fiscal Year
2001, the total cost of all FOIA-related activities for all federal departments
and agencies, as reported in their annual FOIA reports, was $287,792,041.08,
which is the second time that this reported figure has exceeded the quarter-billion-dollar
level. Less than ten million dollars of these costs were reported as spent on
litigation-related activities. Of total agency costs, only the amount of $7,756,379.22
(or 2.7%) was reported to have been recouped by the government (albeit not retained
by individual federal agencies) through the collection of FOIA fees.
The federal
department with the highest total costs was the Department of Justice, which
reported spending more than seventy-four million dollars on FOIA-related activities
during Fiscal Year 2001. Second was the Department of Defense, at more than
thirty-nine million dollars, and in third place was the Department of Veterans
Affairs, at more than twenty-nine million dollars. The federal department that
reported spending the least amount of money on the FOIA was the Department of
Education, at just under $400,000. Also at the lower end of reported FOIA costs
for federal departments were the Department of Housing and Urban Department,
the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Energy, each of which spent
less than four million dollars.
Among other federal
agencies, twelve reported spending more than one million dollars on FOIA matters
during the fiscal year. The Social Security Administration led this list, reporting
the expenditure of $14.6 million during the year. Among the others were the
Environmental Protection Agency, at $12.2 million, the CIA, at $8.8 million,
the Securities and Exchange Commission, at $2,453,654, the National Archives
and Records Administration, at $1,924,522, and the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, at $1,802,423. On the other hand, sixteen agencies reported total
FOIA costs of $25,000 or less during the year.
Comparisons
with Previous Years
The Department
of Justice's standard format for annual FOIA reports includes a section (Section
VIII) entitled, "Comparisons with Previous Year(s)." Agencies used this section
to provide additional information about their administration of the Act that
was of particular significance to them, including additional statistics where
applicable. Accord FOIA Post, "Supplemental
Guidance on Annual FOIA Reports" (posted 8/13/01) (advising agencies that
such statistics "can be specified in Section VIII, Part D, of the standard report
format").
Many departments
and agencies that provided information in this category stated that they had
reduced the number of incoming FOIA requests by posting information of public
interest on their FOIA Web sites. For example, the National Endowment for the
Arts reported that largely due to information that it made available on its
FOIA Web site, its volume of FOIA requests decreased from a high of 697 in Fiscal
Year 1995 to only eighty-four in Fiscal Year 2001. Likewise, agencies such as
the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the Corporation for National Service,
Federal Open Market Committee, and the Tennessee Valley Authority reported achieving
such results as well. In this regard, many agencies mentioned putting in their
electronic reading rooms records that have been frequently requested under the
FOIA, as required by the 1996 Electronic FOIA Amendments. See 5 U.S.C.
§ 552(a)(2)(A)-(D).
Additionally,
under this report heading, three federal departments and seventeen other federal
agencies drew attention to significant increases in the numbers of FOIA requests
that they received in Fiscal Year 2001 as compared to fiscal year 2000. By contrast,
four federal departments and eleven other agencies reported in Section VIII
receiving fewer requests in 2001 than in 2000. At the Social Security Administration
(SSA) , where the number of requests has greatly increased in recent years (see
above), much of that increase was attributed by SSA to the use of its records
by genealogists: "The increase in requests was anticipated because more people
are engaged in genealogical activities and one of the more popular records they
request is [a submitted] application for [a] social security number."
For fiscal year
2001, many departments and agencies reported that they were working to improve
their timeliness by various electronic means. Among these were the Department
of Commerce, the Department of Education, the Department of the Interior, the
Department of Justice, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the National
Transportation Safety Board, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Additionally,
many agencies reported the value of using in-house and external training activities
for its FOIA personnel. Among these were the Department of Agriculture, the
Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior,
the Department of Justice, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation, the Federal Maritime Commission, NASA, the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
Lastly, many agencies
reported that they were monitoring and evaluating their internal FOIA administrative
procedures in an effort to reduce their request-processing times. Among these
were the Department of Agriculture, the Department of the Interior, the Federal
Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Social Security Administration.
As noted above,
the Office of Information and Privacy prepares governmentwide annual FOIA report
compilations such as this on a regular yearly basis, as soon as possible after
the completion of all agency reports following the end of each fiscal year --
which requires increased diligence by all agencies in the timely completion
of their reports each year. See FOIA Post, "Supplemental
Guidance on Annual FOIA Reports" (posted 8/13/01).
Therefore, all
agencies should remember that the untimeliness of the last agency to complete
its report each year necessarily constrains this governmentwide compilation
process, so it is important that all agencies heed the Act's requirements for
the completion of their annual FOIA reports in a timely fashion. See
5 U.S.C. § 552(e)(1)-(3). This issue of annual report timeliness
was pointedly raised in a Government Accounting Office review of agency compliance
during this past year. See FOIA Post, "Follow-Up
Report on E-FOIA Implementation Issued" (posted 9/27/02) (citing 2002
GAO Report drawing prominent attention to cabinet agency that failed to
complete its Fiscal Year 2001 report by July 2002). (posted 10/17/02)
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