Let's hope OGIS makes a difference with FOIA

In the report accompanying their markup of the fiscal 2011 National Archives and Records Administration budget, Senate appropriators direct that $3 million of the full $348.7 million NARA request should be used to fund the Office of Government Information Services.

OGIS began operations in September 2009 and provides services to mediate disputes between Freedom of Information Act requesters and federal agencies, as well as reviewing FOIA policies, procedures and compliance.

And OGIS is apparently spinning itself up as a working agency, soliciting companies (responses were due August 24) for software to support a case management system as well as "stakeholder collaboration" and public communication activities.

Which is great, because many federal agencies around the federal government could use help in answering their FOIA requests.

As Kristina Brown, Hilary Dockray and Paul Sullivan from Veterans for Common Sense wrote in a guest commentary which ran earlier this month, the Department of Veterans Affairs often has a "troublesome 'don't look, don't find' attitude" when it comes to embarrassing information.

"In one case, VA denied the existence of reports about disabled Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans that Paul Sullivan, the executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, prepared while he worked at VA," they state.

Anyone who has sent FOIA requests to the federal government no doubt has similar stories. I'm trying myself to get some documents out of the federal government and am frustrated by the lack of response in some agencies--leaving messages on a FOIA "public liaison" voicemail and never hearing back from anyone. (Here's looking at you, Federal Aviation Administration!)

So let's hope that OGIS gets that new system soon. But in the meantime, might anyone from the FAA FOIA office care to give me a call back? - Dave