Category Archives: Department of Justice

Department of Justice misleads Americans about the true causes and costs of FOIA delays during Sunshine Week

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For the first time in over a decade, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) celebrated Sunshine Week with a blog post, instead of a public event. In past years, a high-ranking DOJ official — often the DOJ Chief FOIA Officer – would make a speech, followed by the Director of the Office of Information Policy (OIP).

The OIP director would make a presentation about the state of FOIA compliance across the executive branch, backed by data they’d collected from the annual reports agencies were required to submit.

And then the OIP Director would give out awards to the FOIA professionals across the executive branch, offering important public recognition for their service. (I know, because I have attended most of these events since 2016 at “Main Justice” in downtown DC.)

In 2026, there was no public ceremony or speeches, nor has OIP published and socialized open data that shows the state of agency compliance with the statutory obligation to respond to FOIA requests within 20 days that Congress has repeatedly mandated. 

Instead, OIP published a short statement by Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward, Chief FOIA Officer of the  Department of Justice, atop a short blog post about Sunshine Week by Office of Information Policy Director Sean Glendening. 

To be clear, we vigorously agree with AAG Woodward that “our FOIA professionals are the unsung heroes of democracy” and welcome the Department honoring their service. Unfortunately, the Department of Justice also made several false assertions in his short statement to the American people that require correction.

1) This is not “the most transparent Department of Justice in our nation’s history,” by any objective measure. Any subjective assessment that ignores the contempt the USAG has shown towards Congress and the free press or the stonewalling around the Epstein Files isn’t honest.

2) Prior administrations made real progress in “improving FOIA processes and prioritizing citizens’ access to information about their government” by proactively disclosing data online. This administration has not. 

They’ve gutted FOIA offices, taken down public data and fired statistical officials, and stonewalled requestors, the direct result of which is more litigation and wasted taxpayer funds. It is downright Orwellian to state the inverse is true on a Department of Justice website during Sunshine Week. Doing so may even run afoul of the Information Quality Act, which requires officials to ensure “the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information (including statistical information) disseminated by Federal agencies.”

3) The “ever-increasing burden” placed on FOIA professionals is the result of multiple administrations failing to invest far more in the FOIA, from modernization, increasing state capacity, carving out dedicated, secure alternatives for first-party records access to veterans and people seeking immigration records, to proactively disclosing records corporations are buying under the FOIA and other frequently requested records.

The need for systemic investment in improving the systemic problems that have made FOIA broken for people unwilling or unable to file lawsuits for access to information has been abundantly clear for decades. The American people can see this truth for themselves in the breadth and depth of recommendations made by the U.S. Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee, or experience it by making a FOIA request through FOIA.gov.

As Nate Jones reported for the Washington Post, instead of “improving FOIA processes” as DOJ falsely claimed, this administration cut FOIA staff. That predictably has negatively affected the capacity of agencies to respond to requestors quickly – much less provide records responsive under the FOIA in a timely manner.

In his first public post about FOIA, the new OIP director did not recognize any of those facts, nor offer any thanks to the FOIA staff dismissed and honor their service — including his predecessor.

Instead, he and the AAG chose to try to create an “alternative fact” during a national celebration of public access to information. 

Namely, they’re advancing a narrative in which “a small group of frequent requesters accounts for an increasing volume of both total and complex FOIA requests” – without showing any data to back up this claim. In this alternative narrative, this “forces agencies to divert a disproportionate share of limited resources away from the timely processing of simpler requests submitted by individual members of the public.”

Got it? Increased secrecy, censorship of open data, legacy systems, diminished state capacity, lax Congressional oversight, malign negligence by OMB, firing the AOTUS, and serial underfunding for decades aren’t at fault for the increasingly poor performance by FOIA offices. Instead, it’s a “small group of requestors” that’s “forcing” agencies to divert “limited resources.” That’s transparently misleading.

As it does every year, OIP quoted James Madison, who famously stated “[a] popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps, both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”  

That’s more true than ever in 2026. 

Thank you to the dedicated FOIA professionals and everyone else in and outside of government who continues to arm the American with the self-knowledge required for self-governance – including about the true state of the administration of the Freedom of Information Act and public access to the public records we all pay for with our taxpayer dollars. 

The Department of Justice’s “FOIA Wizard” isn’t a magical solution for White House strategic silence on open government

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In December 2021, President Biden urged “every nation in the Open Government Partnership to take up a call to action to fight the scourge of corruption, to “stand with those in civil society and courageous citizens around the world who are demanding transparency of their governments,” and to “all work together to hold governments accountable for the people they serve.”

Almost two years later, the United States is still not leading by the power of our example by including the priorities of US civil society organizations in additional commitments and engaging the American people and press using the bully pulpit of the White House, despite rejoining the Open Government Partnership’s Steering Committee.

What was missing from President Biden’s remarks at the Open Government Summit

That disconnect was evident at a public meeting with the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy (OIP) on September 26, 2023. Members of the public and press who are interested in a first look at the Freedom of Information “Wizard” the OIP has been building with Forum One Communications can watch recorded video of the meeting on YouTube, along with DoJ’s work on common business standards and the “self-assessment toolkit” the agency updated. All three of these pre-existing initiatives were submitted as commitments on FOIA in the 5th U.S. National Action Plan for Open Government last December.

The General Services Administration’s new Open Government Secretariat will post a “meeting record” at open.usa.gov — their summary of what happened — though it’s not online yet. (Slides are online, along with agenda and screenshots.)

We posed a number of questions via chat that Lindsey Steel from OIP acknowledged, though not always directly answered — like the U.S. government not co-creating any of the FOIA commitments that were being discussed with civil society, in the Open Government Partnership model. (Unlike other previous public meetings in 2022 and 2023, members of civil society were given the opportunity to ask questions on video.)

While it’s both useful and laudable for OIP to take public questions on its work, the pre-baked commitments they presented on were not responsive to the significant needs of a historic moment in which administration of the Freedom of Information Act appears broken to many close observers, and follow an opaque, flawed consultation that was conducted neither in the spirit nor co-creation standards of the Open Government Partnership itself.

While the Open Government Partnership’s Independent Review Mechanism is far slower that press cycles in 2023, the independent researchers there have caught up with the USA’s poor performance since 2016. (Unfortunately, the OGP’s Independent Review Mechanism and Steering Committee’s governance processes both move too slowly to sanction governments during or after the co-creation process for failing to meet co-creation standards in a way that would have empowered US civil society in 2022.)

In a letter dated August 13, 2023, the Open Government Partnership formally informed the US government on August that it has acted contrary to process in its co-creation of.4th National Action Plan for Open Government and implementation of the plan.

The U.S. government’s response did not directly acknowledge any of the substantive criticism in the IRM or by good government watchdogs, much less announce a plan to address its failure to co-create a 5th National Action Plan last fall by coming back to the table.

Instead, the General Services Administration simply promised to do better in 2024 in a 6th plan and to keep updating the public on the work U.S. government was already doing.

The request of the coalition prior to the Open Government Partnership Summit was for the U.S. government to come back to the table and co-create new commitments that are representative of our priorities, not to continue hosting virtual webinars at which civil servants provide “updates” on pre-existing commitments in order to be in compliance with the bare minimum that OGP asks of participating nations.

With respect to FOIA, doing more than the minimum would look like the White House making new commitments to effective implementation of the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 and the Open Government Data Act through executive actions, including:

  • Building on U.S. Attorney General’s memorandum mandating the presumption of openness and ensure fair and effective FOIA administration.
  • Convening the U.S. Digital Service, 18F, and the nation’s civic tech community to work on improving FOIA.gov, using the same human-centric design principles for improved experience that are being applied to service delivery across U.S. government.
  • Making sure FOIA.gov users can search for records across reading rooms, Data.gov, USASpending.gov, and other federal data repositories.
  • Restoring a Cross-Agency Priority goal for FOIA.
  • Advising agencies to adopt the US FOIA Advisory Committee recommendations.
  • Tracking agency spending on FOIA and increase funding to meet the demand.
  • Directing the Department of Justice to roll out the “release-to-one, release-to-all” policy for FOIA piloted at the direction of President Obama, which the State Department has since adopted.
  • Collecting and publishing data on which records are being purchased under the FOIA by commercial enterprises for non-oversight purposes, and determine whether that data can or should be proactively disclosed.
  • Funding and building dedicated, secure online services for people to gain access to immigration records and veterans records — as the DHS Advisory Committee recommended — instead of forcing them to use the FOIA.
  • Commiting to extending the FOIA to algorithms and revive Code.gov as a repository for public sector code.”

We continue to hope that President Biden will take much more ambitious actions on government transparency, accountability, participation, and collaboration in order to restore broken public trust in our federal government, acting as a bulwark against domestic corruption and authoritarianism.

Department of Justice Quietly Answers Senate Questions on FOIA Regression

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During Sunshine Week in March 2019, members of the Senate Judiciary sent a letter to the Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy (OIP) that asked for information about the state of the Freedom of Information Act, noting a lack of … Continue reading →