FOIA News: OIP hosting workshop 7/31/24

Register Now for an Upcoming FOIA Best Practices Workshop on Backlog Reduction Plans

DOJ/OIP, FOIA Post, July 9, 2024

Join the Office of Information Policy (OIP) at its next Best Practices Workshop on creating and implementing backlog reduction plans.  Developing effective backlog reduction plans is critical to managing ever-increasing volumes of requests.  The workshop will feature panelists from agencies with varied FOIA workloads discussing their own backlog reduction efforts.     

The workshop will take place virtually over WebEx on July 31, 2024 from 10 AM – 12 PM EDT.  A summary of the best practices discussed will be posted on OIP’s Best Practices page.

This event is open to all agency FOIA professionals.  Federal employees may register here.  

For questions or more information, please contact OIP at DOJ.OIP.FOIA@usdoj.gov.

FOIA News: PTO defends Exemption 5 redactions

Patent Office Continues To Fight Smartflash's FOIA Suit

By Adam Lidgett, Law 360, July 8, 2024

The U. S. Patent and Trademark Office has again said it shouldn't have to turn over documents an inventor is seeking about Patent Trial and Appeal Board reviews of his patents, saying that doing so would harm its ability to respond to public information requests. . . .

The federal government on Monday filed a reply brief backing its bid for summary judgment in the case filed y Smartflash LLC, which is owned by inventor Patrick Racz.

Smartflash had said the PTAB panels in its cases were manipulated to benefit challenger Apple, and the the documents it got from the office in response to its Freedom of Information Act requests omitted too much information to provide clarity. The company had said that the emails were improperly redacted and that it was treated differently from other patent owners, according to court records.

Read more here (access with free 7-day trial).

The docket and complaint are available here.

FOIA News: Happy 58th Anniversary

July 4 — The 58th Anniversary of The Freedom of Information Act

By Floyd Nelson, Blue Ridge Leader & Loudoun Today, July 4, 2024

More than 50 years ago, Michael Ross Lemov was still a young, intrepid general counsel who had just finished working on the National Commission on Product Safety, the forerunner to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. That was the time he told me he started working for the late California Congressman John Moss, the primary author, the champion and the driving force behind the Freedom of Information Act.

Thus marked the beginning of a friendship, mentorship and joint commitment to American democracy and open government. Mind you, Moss had already single-handedly brought the Freedom of Information Act or FOIA into being in 1966.

Read more here.

FOIA News: Requests to FDA & SEC are more likely to be commercial, new analysis reveals

FOIAengine Reveals Trends Behind the Big Numbers at FDA, SEC  

By Randy Miller, Law St. Media, June 26, 2024

This week we analyze the sources of Freedom of Information Act requests made during May to the Food and Drug Administration and the Securities and Exchange Commission. This analysis provides a macro view of who is submitting the 20,000 plus requests made each year to the two agencies.

FOIAengine, the competitive-intelligence database that tracks FOIA requests in as close to real-time as their availability allows, organizes the entities who submit FOIA requests into ten categories: Commercial, Educational, Federal Government, Financial Institution, Law Firm, News Media, Non-Profit, Organization Not Identified, Other, and Local and State Government. The following charts show the number of requests to the FDA and the SEC for each of these categories.

Read more here.

FOIA News: Archivists issue statement re: NIH controversy

SAA Urges Adherence to FOIA and FRA Rules by NIH

Press Release, Society of American Archivists, June 24, 2024

The Society of American Archivists (SAA) notes with concern the correspondence released by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic from Dr. David Morens and other officials at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) referencing the use of private email accounts for the specific purpose of avoiding disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). SAA leadership is particularly concerned by the implication from a subset of the released correspondence that dedicated records staff within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) may be providing guidance for avoiding FOIA requests. 

Read more here.

FOIA News: OGIS annual meeting on 7/24/24

The Office of Government Information Services will hold its annual meeting on July 24, 2024, per a notice published today in the Federal Register. The purpose of the meeting is “to discuss OGIS's reviews and reports, and allow interested people to appear and present oral or written statements.” The 90-minute, virtual meeting will begin at 10am EDT. Registration is required.

FOIA News: Upcoming private sector FOIA/PA training

The American Society of Access Professionals is offering a three-day, in-person FOIA-Privacy Act workshop in Pittsburgh starting September 4, 2024.

Graduate School USA has three-day, virtual FOIA/PA training starting July 16, 2024, August 5, 2024, and September 30, 2024.

Management Concepts offers a virtual, three-day FOIA/PA course beginning September 23, 2024.

FOIA News: Deadline approaching to comment on Stars & Stripes regulations

Military paper moves to defend its 1st Amendment rights

By Liam Scott, Voice of America, June 21, 2024

Supporters of the U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes are using a public consultation period on the outlet’s regulations to try to roll back what they say are restrictive rules.

Funded in part by the Department of Defense but editorially independent by order of Congress, the Stripes has operated under the same Federal Register regulations since 1993.

But with updates to those rules open to public comment until Monday, journalists and media analysts are drawing attention to three longstanding articles they believe should be relaxed or scrapped entirely.

These include vague wording that doesn’t explicitly authorize reporters to ask questions of Defense Department officials, as well as regulations that block the paper’s staff from filing Freedom of Information Act, FOIA, requests or from publishing classified information that was legally obtained.

Read more here.

See proposed regulations here.

FOIA News: How to keep busy while waiting for a FOIA response

What Can You Do While Waiting for a FOIA Response?

It often takes almost a year or more to get public records from the federal government. Here are some things you can do while you wait.

Matthew Petti, Reason, July 2024 issue

The government is slow, especially at answering questions about itself. In theory, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lets Americans ask any federal agency for any public record and get a response back within 20 days. All 50 states have similar records laws. After all, government documents are the property of the taxpayer.

* * *

Using data from the public records site MuckRock, Reason calculated the average response times for several agencies. It turns out that you can do a lot of fun (and not so fun) things while waiting for bureaucrats to give you the documents that your taxes paid for.

Read more here.

FOIA News: Private emails at NIH trigger another op-ed

For citizens to avoid the Faucian bargain, FOIA reform is needed 

By Curtis Schube & Gary Lawkowski, The Hill, June 14, 2024

Just before Memorial Day, a bombshell report was published that implicated Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. David Morens, one of his senior advisors, for using private emails and phones to avoid public oversight and scrutiny of official activities. Morens even discussed how he would delete messages in order to avoid the discovery of emails.  

There may be no better time than now to talk about reforming how the government collects and provides records.

Read more here.