Archive for 'Best practices'
Navigating a Sea of Records
Editor’s note: This guest post is from Wendy Schumacher, Ph.D., PMP. Wendy, thank you for sharing your story. I started my job as the FOIA Officer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) about a year after the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. My new colleagues had collected, organized, reviewed, redacted and [...]
Posted by Carrie McGuire on February 12, 2013, under About FOIA, Best practices.
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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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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
Check out the next FOIA Requester Roundtable on FOIA Libraries
Did you know that agencies are required under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 USC § 552(a)(2), to make available to the public five categories of records: final opinions, including concurring and dissenting opinions and orders, made in adjudicated cases; policy statements not published in the Federal Register; administrative staff manuals and instructions that [...]
Posted by Kirsten Mitchell on January 18, 2013, under About FOIA, Best practices, OGIS events.
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Dealing with Surplus in a Time of Scarcity: Reducing FOIA Backlogs
There’s a great deal of pressure on agencies to reduce the number of FOIA requests in their backlogs. The FOIA community talks a lot about backlogs, but mostly in numbers, not in terms of how some agencies have succeeded in reducing the number of cases awaiting response. Considering the budget environment in which all [...]
Posted by Carrie McGuire on January 11, 2013, under About FOIA, Best practices.
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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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Checking it Twice: Appeals Provide Necessary Second Look
The FOIA process, as with much in life, provides an opportunity to give our actions a second look. After all, most of us don’t file a major report without asking someone to proofread for errors, right? Or walk out the door without one last check in the mirror? FOIA directs that requesters can appeal “any [...]
Posted by Corinna Zarek on September 13, 2012, under About FOIA, About OGIS, Best practices.
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