Enacted in 1977, the FOIA established, for the first time, an effective statutory right of access to government information. The principles of government openness and accountability underlying the FOIA, however, are inherent in the democratic ideal: "The basic purpose of the FOIA is to ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society, needed to check against corruption and to hold the governors accountable to the governed."
The FOIA evolved after a decade of debate among agency officials, legislators, and public interest group representatives. It revised the public disclosure section of the Administrative Procedure Act, which generally had been recognized as falling far short of its disclosure goals and had come to be looked upon as more a withholding statute than a disclosure statute. By contrast, under the thrust and structure of the FOIA, virtually every record possessed by a federal agency must be made available to the public in one form or another, unless it is specifically exempted from disclosure or specifically excluded from the Act's coverage in the first place.
The FOIA contains six subsections, the first of which establishes two categories of information which must automatically be disclosed. Subsection (a)(1) of the FOIA requires publication in the FEDERAL REGISTER of information such as descriptions of agency organizations, functions, procedures, substantive rules, and statements of general policy. This requirement provides automatic public access to important basic information regarding the transaction of agency business.
Subsection (a)(2) of the FOIA requires that materials such as final opinions rendered in the adjudication of cases, specific policy statements, and certain administrative staff manuals routinely be made available for public inspections and copying. These materials, which are commonly referred to as "reading room" materials, are required to be indexed to facilitate that public inspection. Public access to such records serves to guard against the development of agency "secret law" known to agency personnel but not to members of the public who deal with agencies.
Subsection (a)(3) of the FOIA states that records not available under sections (a)(1) and (a)(2) above, may be requested in writing in accordance with an agency’s implementing regulations (Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) – for NOAA it is 15 CFR, Part 4, Public Information). Once an agency properly receives a FOIA request, it has twenty working days to make a determination on the request.
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