The Faster FOIA Act – Second Time’s a Charm

While the Faster FOIA Act is currently in limbo, having failed to pass in the House earlier this year. The Senate has once again passed the Act, and it is on its way back to the House, where it was previously rejected. Passing unanimously in the Senate, the Faster FOIA Act establishes an advisory panel to examine and address FOIA backlogs in government agencies.

The advisory panel will be analyzing FOIA request handling, systems for charging and accepting fees and fee waiver practices in an attempt to reduce handling times. They will also be seeking other methods of reducing FOIA backlogs and fundamentally streamlining FOIA processes. While the panel will not be able to set changes in place, it will be providing Congress with recommendations, which could be acted upon on a Congressional level.

The Faster FOIA Act ultimately has the potential to affect all requesters, but will have the most impact on frequent requesters, such as journalists and news outlets, advocacy groups, law firms and the like. Currently, less than half of the agencies evaluated by the Information Security Oversight Office have been found to be making steps toward more transparency, as ordered by President Obama.

With more than 69,000 FOIA requests backlogged across agencies and a higher volume of requests coming in each year, change in the FOIA process is clearly needed. Both standardization among agencies and automation systems, such as Privasoft’s AccessPro Suite, can lead to greatly reduced turnaround times which would also lead to rapid reductions in FOIA backlogs.