Archive for 'About OGIS'
Requesting Records Across Agencies
With 100 departments and agencies, the Executive Branch can feel downright massive sometimes. Although each of the 100 has a separate and distinct mission, and no doubt creates very different kinds of records, there is also some overlap in the way agencies operate and with the records they keep. Since its start, OGIS has been [...]
Posted by Corinna Zarek on February 6, 2013, under About FOIA, About OGIS, Best practices.
Tags: Team Approach
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Radio Free FOIA
OGIS Director Miriam Nisbet appeared on WAMU radio’s award-winning Kojo Nnamdi show on January 29, 2013, for a discussion titled “Following Through on FOIA: Progress and Pitfalls.” Daniel Metcalfe, Executive Director of the Collaboration on Government Secrecy at American University’s Washington College of Law and Thomas Blanton, Director of the National Security Archive at George [...]
Posted by Carrie McGuire on January 30, 2013, under About FOIA, About OGIS.
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Thinking about FOIA Libraries
On January 21, 2013, representatives of 12 agencies and several requester groups gathered to discuss online FOIA “libraries.” The Attorney General’s 2009 FOIA Memorandum encouraged agencies to post information online in advance of a formal request. Many agencies’ FOIA regulations also require them to post records for which they receive multiple requests, and other agencies [...]
Posted by Carrie McGuire on January 24, 2013, under About FOIA, About OGIS, Best practices, OGIS events.
Comments: 2
Changes
This post is from OGIS Deputy Director Karen Finnegan. “The only thing that stays the same is change.” Melissa Etheridge At OGIS, we specialize in change. The very existence of OGIS represents an innovative change to the FOIA administrative process. Our daily work involves changing the way people approach conflict and how they communicate with [...]
Posted by Karen Finnegan on December 18, 2012, under About OGIS.
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Don’t shut your eyes to the importance of FOIA regulations
Freedom of Information Act regulations sound like a sure cure for insomnia, but if FOIA were a movie, their role would be a real sleeper. We at OGIS recognize that well-crafted FOIA regulations are key to an effective agency FOIA process so we regularly comment on proposed changes to regulations as part of our statutory [...]
Posted by Kirsten Mitchell on December 13, 2012, under About FOIA, About OGIS, Best practices, FOIA in the news.
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Records Management Directive Shifts Into Gear
It’s common wisdom in the library and information science community that if you have something and you can’t find it, you don’t have it. This principle is as true for agencies’ records as it is in university libraries, and it directly affects the efficiency and effectiveness of agency FOIA programs. We’ve written before about President [...]
Posted by Carrie McGuire on December 6, 2012, under About FOIA, About OGIS, Best practices, Open Government, Records Management.
Comments: 2
A Peek Inside the Sausage Factory
While many (correctly) associate OGIS with mediation services to resolve FOIA disputes, those services are not the full extent of our mandate. Congress created OGIS to also review agencies’ FOIA policies, procedures and compliance. Sounds great, but how does OGIS learn what agencies are doing, and what do we do with that information? Obviously, our [...]
Posted by Carrie McGuire on November 28, 2012, under About FOIA, About OGIS, Best practices.
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Civil War-era Pension Records: An OGIS Case Study
When University of California–Los Angeles economics professor Dora Costa started looking at aging processes and extreme longevity, she knew military files of Civil War veterans would be crucial to her research. Costa planned to compare medical records and life histories of Civil War veterans with present-day veterans’ records for soldiers who lived to be at [...]
Posted by Corinna Zarek on November 19, 2012, under About OGIS, Best practices, OGIS Case Study.
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Small Agencies, Big Issues: Upcoming Training Opportunity for FOIA Professionals
OGIS will offer an all-day Dispute Resolution Skills for FOIA Professionals training program on Monday December 3, 2012, at the National Archives building in Washington, D.C. While we’ve offered this training program — which equips FOIA professionals with practical communications and dispute resolution skills — for nearly three years, this session will be a little [...]
Posted by Carrie McGuire on November 8, 2012, under About OGIS, OGIS events.
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Timing is Everything: When Does OGIS Get Involved?
Experienced FOIA requesters can attest that FOIA requests follow a well-established process: a requester submits a request; the agency responds to that request; if the requester is dissatisfied with the response, he/she submits an administrative appeal; the agency responds to the appeal. Before OGIS opened in 2009, a requester who remained dissatisfied after the agency [...]
Posted by Carrie McGuire on November 2, 2012, under About FOIA, About OGIS.
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