OIP Releases Assessment and Success Stories from Agencies' 2014 Chief FOIA Officer Reports

This year marks the fifth anniversary of the issuance of Attorney General Holder's FOIA Guidelines, and the fifth year that agencies have published their Chief FOIA Officer Reports. Since 2010, agency Chief FOIA Officer Reports have served as a valuable resource for agencies to detail their efforts in improving their FOIA administration and implementing the President's and Attorney General's FOIA Memoranda.The information reported annually in these reports describing the steps agencies have taken “to improve FOIA operations and facilitate information disclosure” continues to demonstrate how agencies are answering the Attorney General’s call to be “fully accountable for [their] administration of the FOIA.” With the issuance of agencies' 2014 Chief FOIA Officer Reports during this past Sunshine Week, OIP has once again prepared a summary and assessment of the progress made in implementing the Attorney General’s FOIA Guidelines.

In an effort to provide a timely overview of the information provided in agencies' 2014 Chief FOIA Officer Reports, this year for the first time OIP provided its summary of the Chief FOIA Officer Reports in a five-part series on FOIA Post that began during Sunshine Week 2014. Agencies and the public are encouraged to review this series and the individual 2014 Chief FOIA Officer Reports issued by agencies to learn more about all of the efforts made this past year to improve FOIA administration.   

Complementing this five-part series, OIP’s 2014 Assessment provides a visual snapshot of several key areas of FOIA administration. For 2014, OIP has expanded the assessment in several ways to provide greater detail as to the levels of success achieved by agencies during the reporting period. In addition to adding several new milestones, the 2014 Assessment now includes:

• An expanded five-step scoring system – In an effort to add greater gradation that more accurately illustrates the levels of success achieved by agencies, OIP uses an expanded five step scoring system for certain milestones in the 2014 Assessment.

• Overall scores for each assessed section – An overall agency score is also provided for each of the assessed sections.   

• Additional narrative information from agency reports – Agencies provide a wealth of information as a part of their Chief FOIA Officer Reports that do not lend themselves to scoring, but are still very informative as to their efforts to improve their FOIA administration.  The 2014 Assessment includes a range of narrative information that provides greater context to the milestones that are scored. 

• Detailed Methodology – In an effort to provide greater clarity as to how OIP scored agencies in this year’s assessment, for the first time OIP is providing a detailed methodology of how each question was scored.  

The full assessment will once again also be provided in an open, machine readable (CSV) format.  As part of the assessment, OIP has also included guidance based on our review to assist agencies in making further improvements in the years ahead.

Finally, as in past years, OIP has also compiled a collection of success stories in FOIA administration from key agencies. This collection, and those from previous years, can be viewed on the Reports page of OIP’s website.

As demonstrated by the Summary, Assessment, and Success Stories from agencies' 2014 Chief FOIA Officer Reports, agencies continue to apply the presumption of openness, employ innovative and creative solutions in order to find efficiencies, increase proactive disclosures, and improve their administration of the FOIA. At the same time, the level of success achieved by agencies in these efforts varies and there is still work to be done. OIP’s yearly assessment is intended to serve as a vehicle for both agencies and the public to recognize and celebrate agency successes and also to identify areas where further improvements can be made.    

You may view OIP’s 2014 Summary and Assessment, along with summaries and assessments from previous years, and the agency Chief FOIA Officer Reports themselves, on our Reports page.

You may also read each of the posts summarizing the 2014 Chief FOIA Officer Reports on FOIA Post (Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V).