Sunshine Week: Open Government and Transparency

As the Federal Communications Commission’s Chief FOIA Officer, I am responsible for oversight of the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) at the FCC. My 2013 Annual Report cited the progress we have made in our handling of FOIA requests.

Since last year, we have fewer backlogged FOIA appeals and all ten of the oldest pending FOIA appeals have been addressed. And, importantly, access to agency records continues to improve in large part because of a greater effort to post materials of interest on the web. This last point is particularly important because the more the Commission posts on its website, the less the public needs to use FOIA to obtain records. The statistics prove the point. The number of initial FOIA requests we received declined by 15% from FY 2011 to FY 2012 and continues to decline during FY 2013.