Special Thanks
OGIS thanks the 112th Congress for its support of the FOIA Ombudsman’s office: Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Senator Patrick Leahy; Committee Member Senator John Cornyn; Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform; and Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of that committee’s Subcommittee on Health Care, District of Columbia, Census and the National Archives, and their personal and committee staffs.
OGIS is grateful to David S. Ferriero, Archivist of the United States; William J. Bosanko, Executive for Agency Services; and National Archives General Counsel Gary M. Stern for their support of the Office’s work and deep understanding of its important mission in America’s democracy. Many colleagues at the National Archives help
OGIS fulfill its mission, for which we are most appreciative. Assistant General Counsel Jean Whyte, director of 
RESOLVE, the National Archives’ Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) program, provided invaluable input to and helped teach OGIS’s revamped Dispute Resolution Skills courses in FY 2011. Teamwork between FOIA and ADR professionals at agencies Governmentwide is a key OGIS best practice, and OGIS is pleased to take the lead through its parent agency, serving as an example of how this innovative collaboration can succeed.
Among the cases OGIS saw in FY 2011 were a handful involving FOIA requests to the National Archives. Several colleagues patiently provided answers to OGIS’s many questions, for which the Office is most appreciative: Martha Murphy, Chief of Special Access, Freedom of Information Section; Jay Olin, Deputy FOIA Officer; Richard Peuser, Supervisory Archivist for the Textual Archives Services Division; and Joseph Scanlon, FOIA and Privacy Act Officer.
OGIS thanks Sandy Paulino and Mark Sprouse of the National Archives Facility and Property Management Division, who were instrumental in OGIS’s move in December 2011 from the National Archives facility in College Park, MD, to Washington, DC, near Capitol Hill. The new location places OGIS geographically closer to the Federal departments and agencies with which it works, as well as many members of the requester community.
Finally, OGIS thanks Kara Carnley Murrhee, OGIS’s 2011 summer law clerk and a student at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, who volunteered as a member of the OGIS team.
