In the United Kingdom, FOIA documents are not only sent to the researcher who asks for them, but posted publicly on agency websites. FOIA archives on British websites often serve as a sort of FAQ for people interested in the activities of an agency, and prevent unnecessary duplicate FOIA requests. It would require little to no effort for the United States to do the same thing. In fact, we could one-up the UK by creating a "foia.gov" that archives every request ever made.
Public FOIA archive on every agency website
Tags: foia
Comments (9)
I love the idea, but saying that it would "require little to no effort" is not very accurate. It would be a huge undertaking.
Not just "creating a "foia.gov" that archives every request ever made" but it should also include the details (as permitted) of the requestor as well as a copy of the information provided in response to the request.
There is almost no reason why this shouldn't be implemented as a first line of business. this not only helps the public, but it helps those of us who work for the fed and routinely get asked -- again and again -- to provide responses to FOIA requests.
This is a great idea.
@thering: actually, it wouldn't be that huge of an undertaking. Most agencies today process FOIA in electronic form anyway, i.e., they scan in the paper docs and do redactions electronically. This creates an electronic record. It's just not that hard to then serve these records up. Doesn't require much disk, doesn't require much CPU, doesn't require much bandwidth.
This is not really a huge effort. The requestor already has to pay for duplication of the records. Just increase the payment to include the cost of posting on a web site.
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This is already in place, I believe, for several agencies. Look at the "Reading Room", for example, on the FBI's FOIA page: http://foia.fbi.gov/
@metropol_47: True, but it's not quite the same thing. As I understand it, the "Electronic Reading Room" concept requires agencies to post frequently requested documents on the web. Agencies have very different ideas of what constitutes a frequently requested document, and some have basically viewed the whole thing as optional. My view is that once you're posting any documents on your web site, it's actually easier simply to post *all* documents. It requires less decision-making on the part of the agency and moves us further towards transparency.
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