Federal FOIA Mediator Begins to Use Technology to Reach Public

On Oct. 22, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) launched the website [1] for the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), which will mediate disputes between the government and those who seek its information. The office, once in danger of being all but muted by the Bush administration, is showing signs of emerging as an independent arbiter seeking out creative solutions to old problems.

The primary purpose of OGIS, created by the 2007 OPEN Government Act, is to improve agency implementation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). OGIS will review the FOIA policies and procedures of agencies, agency compliance with FOIA, and recommend policy changes to Congress and the president to improve FOIA administration.

The OPEN Government Act specified NARA as the location for OGIS in an effort to establish the office at an objective agency with a good reputation for records management. Since the Department of Justice (DOJ) defends agencies accused of inappropriately withholding documents, it is viewed as having a bias toward federal agencies. Hence, Congress created OGIS to be an independent voice on FOIA compliance and complaints.

The OGIS website demonstrates the office’s interest in positioning itself as a liaison between the public and the federal government on FOIA matters. The website provides the public with several ways to contact the office, along with news on FOIA administration developments and congressional testimony. Further, it provides centralized access to FOIA resources outside of the federal government that assist the public in gaining access to federal information. Included in these resources is the Federal Open Government Guide [2], published by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, that is oriented toward the non-lawyer general public.

The office appears likely to expand its online capabilities in the near future. Miriam Nisbet, the first director of OGIS, has set a goal of utilizing online tools to fulfill its mission. In testimony [3] before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September, Nisbet stated that she saw potential in using current technologies to better assess agency compliance and performance under FOIA “similar to what is being done to assess federal agencies’ information technology initiatives through the IT Dashboard [4] [an assessment of federal spending on information technologies offered through USAspending.gov] and Data.gov [5] [a new service providing access to government databases in a one-stop website].” Further, she described plans to establish an online dispute resolution (ODR) system to efficiently process and evaluate a large volume of cases in the office's role as mediator. The utilization of tools to make this process more efficient and more likely to avoid litigation would, according to Nisbet, “save time and money for agencies and public alike, as well as bolster confidence in the openness of government.”

The use of new technology to help monitor government compliance with FOIA and to resolve disputes is an advance that could help resolve disputes more quickly and save agencies and the taxpayers from having to pay the cost of litigation. In recent years, the cost of FOIA litigation [6] has ranged in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. During several of these years, fees collected from FOIA requests amounted to less than half of litigation expenses.

Nisbet, appointed in June, entered the position from UNESCO’s Information for All Program. She also served as the legislative counsel for the American Library Association from 1999-2007. Prior to that, she was the Deputy Director of the DOJ’s Office of Information Privacy.