FOIA March Madness 2017 - II - Appeal logs, procedures, letters, opinions (Department of Housing and Urban Development)

Dear Mr. Lipton:
Attached is your acknowledgement letter.

Good afternoon,

I have received a response from the program office, but I still need to review those provided documents before I can prepare the response.

Attached, please find a letter acknowledging receipt of your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, 17-FI-HQ-01122.
Thank you for your interest in the Department's programs and policies.
Best,
Ethan G. Bodell, Esq.
Government Information Specialist
Office of the Executive Secretariat

Ms. Lipton,

Request 17-FI-HQ-01122 has been prepared for final legal review, signature, and release.
Best,

Ethan Bodell

Good morning Ms. Lipton,

I am in receipt of the responsive documents and will begin review of them by Wednesday of next week.

Dear Ms. Lipton,

Good afternoon. I am a FOIA specialist at HUD who has been tasked with processing your request, as reflected in your email below of April 13. I have now organized responsive search results, based on their appearing in a log and I then arranged each appeal determination letter in the order that they appear in the log. There are roughly 130 letters. All of the appeals-related information that you are seeking are reflected in the letters and the log. My reason for writing is:

Item 5 of your request:

Any instructive or guiding materials provided to and/or utilized by employees of this department’s Freedom of Information Act office. Please include any manuals, procedural materials, reference guides, checklists, training materials, flow charts, directives, memorandums, legal decisions, presentations, or similar material used in the process of an appeal by this office or the office tasked to process FOIA appeals for this office. Any guiding materials used for the preparation of an appeal package should be considered responsive to, though not the entirety of, this element of this request.
seems to going in two directions, one of which is so broad that it could gum up this package from being processed smoothly.

The first sentence seems to be especially broad, in relating to all FOIA instructional material at HUD. (Any instructive or guiding materials provided to and/or utilized by employees of this department’s Freedom of Information Act office.)

The second and third sentences seem to be limited to appeals instructional materials. (Please include any manuals, procedural materials, reference guides, checklists, training materials, flow charts, directives, memorandums, legal decisions, presentations, or similar material used in the process of an appeal by this office or the office tasked to process FOIA appeals for this office. Any guiding materials used for the preparation of an appeal package should be considered responsive to, though not the entirety of, this element of this request.)
Can you reword sentence one, if necessary, to relate more directly to sentences two and three?

Or:

It’s always possible, in case you have a question about HUD FOIA procedures, that you could check with the Office of Public Affairs after you receive your final reply letter – because chances are the questions you may be wanting to have answered could contain enough variables as to not be smoothly answered by whatever guidance material you need. In that case, might you want to consider holding off on asking HUD to fill that portion of your request until you receive the appeals log and appeals determination letters – or, perhaps, even removing that part? Removing that part (either tentatively or fully) would not preclude you from pursuing that part at a later date.
Thanks,

Howard Rosenberg
FOIA Specialist

Dear Beryl Lipton:
Attached is your acknowledgement letter.

Dear Ms. Lipton,

Good afternoon. Thanks for your reply. I can easily and gladly narrow your request to appeals-related guiding material. Would you be agreeable to having HUD create a new request? Having a crisper request will make it easier for the relevant HUD program office that will be conducting your search to not have to reconcile your original request with your narrow one. Also, I would be delighted to help you potentially word your narrower request in a way that you might feel would offer you the best chance to receive a relatively fast reply.

In your original request, this seems to be the item that you want to narrow your search to:

5. Any instructive or guiding materials provided to and/or utilized by employees of this department’s Freedom of Information Act office. Please include any manuals, procedural materials, reference guides, checklists, training materials, flow charts, directives, memorandums, legal decisions, presentations, or similar material used in the process of an appeal by this office or the office tasked to process FOIA appeals for this office. Any guiding materials used for the preparation of an appeal package should be considered responsive to, though not the entirety of, this element of this request.
Since it might be helpful to the HUD program office that would conduct such a search, do you mind if I ask whether you have made a similar request to a different federal agency or department – and received responsive search results? (Offhand, your request sounds very broad, and it’s always possible that there could be one aspect of it that might weigh down the rest of the request. The one thing that jumps out at me is to ask if you could define “instructive or guiding materials” as being items of a general nature as opposed to being, say, research that appeals specialists would perform, say, about the factual particulars of a particular case under appeal? Technically, I can imagine that anything that has ever influenced a HUD appeal decision could be considered an instructive or guiding material.
Thanks,

Howard Rosenberg
FOIA Specialist

Hello,
Please see the Department's attached letter for your response.
Sincerely,
William Smith, HUD FOIA Branch