Improving Freedom of Information Act Implementation

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT: PROCESSING TRENDS SHOW IMPORTANCE OF IMPROVEMENTS
[SOURCE: Government Accountability Office 3/30]
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) establishes that federal agencies must provide access to their information, enabling the public to learn about government operations and decisions. To help ensure proper implementation, the act requires that agencies report annually to the Attorney General, giving specific information about their FOIA operations, such as numbers of requests received and processed and median processing times. Also, a recent Executive Order directs agencies to develop plans to improve FOIA operations, including decreasing backlog. For this study, GAO was asked to examine the status and trends of FOIA processing at 25 major agencies as reflected in annual reports, as well as the extent to which improvement plans contain the elements emphasized by the Executive Order. To do so, GAO analyzed the 25 agencies’ annual reports and improvement plans. GAO suggests that the Congress consider requiring annual reports to provide additional statistics, including arithmetic means. GAO also makes recommendations to strengthen selected improvement plans, among other things. GAO-07-441
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07441.pdf
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d07441high.pdf