Untitled
Tracking # |
FOIA-2022-00931 |
Submitted | March 17, 2022 |
Est. Completion | None |
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Communications
From: Matthew Topic
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:
Emails, calendar entries, and other electronic records of your office dated June 1, 2021, to the date of search, containing the search terms "freedom of information" or "foia." You may exclude records that contain those search terms but were created in the course of processing a particular FOIA request and can exclude from your search any records of people whose jobs are limited to complying with FOIA requests made to your office. The scope of the request includes, for example, records created in the course of discussing and creating the AG's recent FOIA memo and discussions of the issues that are referenced in memo like agency backlogs, timeliness, and the presumption of openness, whether in the context of the creation of that memo or otherwise. You may omit press clipping that have no further discussions.
I am a frequent commentator on FOIA issues, including through publicly available essays and op-eds, and will be making this information available to the general public at least through my Twitter account or other channels.
If you prefer, you may communicate with me via email at matt@loevy.com or call me at 773-368-8812.
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.
In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 business days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
Matthew Topic
From: Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General
Attached is correspondence from the Department of Justice's Office of Information Policy, which is associated with the above-referenced Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
Please do not reply to this e-mail, as this account is not monitored.
Thank you,
-----------------------------------------
Initial Request Staff
Office of Information Policy
U.S. Department of Justice
202-514-3642 (Main Line)
From: Matthew Topic
Thank you. Please provide me with an estimated completion date.
From: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information Act request, copied below, and originally submitted on March 17, 2022. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response. You had assigned it reference number #FOIA-2022-00931.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General
Matthew Topic.
This concerns your pending Freedom of Information Act request dated March 17, 2022, seeking records containing the terms "freedom of information" or "foia" since June 1, 2021.
As you are aware, the primary mission of this Office is the administration of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), including guidance, reporting, and compliance with the FOIA as well as the processing of FOIA requests and the adjudication of administrative appeals of FOIA denials. At this time, a preliminary search has been conducted in this Office and a large volume of potentially responsive records (over 225,000 records) has been located.
I note that you have excluded from the scope of your request (1) "records that contain those search terms but were created in the course of processing a particular FOIA request" and (2) "any records of people whose jobs are limited to complying with FOIA requests" submitted to this Office. With regards to your first limitation, there is no way outside of a manual review of each record to determine if a record concerns specific FOIA request (and therefore outside of the scope of your request) or the administration of the FOIA in general (and therefore within the scope of your request). Likewise, with regards to your second limitation, many of the same individuals who are involved in the processing of FOIA requests and the adjudication of administrative appeals are also involved in matters related to guidance, reporting, and compliance with the FOIA. In brief, your two limitations do not significantly change the volume of records that are potentially responsive to your request nor reduce the manual burden that would be required to determine if these records are responsive to your request. As such, we need further clarification from you to ensure that your request is adequately described.
There are various ways you could focus for your request to allow this Office to conduct an appropriate records search. For example, in your request letter, you state that the scope of your request includes "records created in the course of discussing and creating the AG's recent FOIA memo and discussions of the issues that are referenced in the memo like agency backlogs, timeliness, and the presumption of openness, whether in the context of the creation of that memo or otherwise." Accordingly, you could focus your request to records related to the creation and implementation of the Attorney General's FOIA Guidelines of March 15, 2022. This would limit our records search to specific officials within this Office and focus the request to a specific topic. Alternatively, you could limit your request to records maintained by certain individuals within this Office, such as our Director and Chief of Staff, as those individuals would not maintain a significant volume of records related to the processing of specific FOIA requests or the adjudication of specific administrative appeals but would maintain records related to the general administration of the FOIA itself.
Please feel free to respond to this email to discuss your options in ensuring that your request adequately describes the records you are seeking.
Doug Hibbard
Chief, Initial Request Staff
Office of Information Policy
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