I am a FOIA Officer and Hate It

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FOIA officer or FOIA processor? I'm a FOIA officer and absolutely love what I do. I manage it for my agency so I really do have the power to make changes, get AI, discovery software, staffing needs, mandate better records. I run a tight ship and we have pretty much no backlog whatsoever.

I will say that FOIA is a sinking ship. I totally understand that you get requests for thousands and thousands of pages, people pay absolutely $0, and then sue you when you don't release 100,000 pages in 20 days. It's ridiculous and out of control. Lawsuits are out of control government wide. Unmanaged email systems are really killing us. It pains me when requesters are just doing bogus searches on vague terms like "climate change" or something and don't have an article they're writing. I believe in government transparency and my mission, but we're swamped!

I often wish I had the ability to speak with other FOIA officers at other agencies.

I was very specific. I said FOIA OFFICER.

And since we have no staff, I also process ALL of the FOIA requests.

Then work with the head of your agency to make changes, get more staff and work with records too. Advocate for your program. Make sure they're following the DOJ recommendations. I get very few easy or normal FOIAs, so processing 50 FOIAs a month would need a bigger staff.

Yeah, think OP is a bit hyperbolic. Also, they never said whether they are the CHIEF FOIA officer. CFOs have a lot of networking opportunities through DOJ OIP.

50 requests a week?? So 600 a year? Run the report on FOIA.gov of agencies that get that many requests a year and find the one with 1 FTE and we’ve got OP. You know, if they’re telling the truth

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FOIA officer or FOIA processor? I'm a FOIA officer and absolutely love what I do. I manage it for my agency so I really do have the power to make changes, get AI, discovery software, staffing needs, mandate better records. I run a tight ship and we have pretty much no backlog whatsoever.

I will say that FOIA is a sinking ship. I totally understand that you get requests for thousands and thousands of pages, people pay absolutely $0, and then sue you when you don't release 100,000 pages in 20 days. It's ridiculous and out of control. Lawsuits are out of control government wide. Unmanaged email systems are really killing us. It pains me when requesters are just doing bogus searches on vague terms like "climate change" or something and don't have an article they're writing. I believe in government transparency and my mission, but we're swamped!

I often wish I had the ability to speak with other FOIA officers at other agencies.

I was very specific. I said FOIA OFFICER.

And since we have no staff, I also process ALL of the FOIA requests.

Then work with the head of your agency to make changes, get more staff and work with records too. Advocate for your program. Make sure they're following the DOJ recommendations. I get very few easy or normal FOIAs, so processing 50 FOIAs a month would need a bigger staff.

Yeah, think OP is a bit hyperbolic. Also, they never said whether they are the CHIEF FOIA officer. CFOs have a lot of networking opportunities through DOJ OIP.

50 requests a week?? So 600 a year? Run the report on FOIA.gov of agencies that get that many requests a year and find the one with 1 FTE and we’ve got OP. You know, if they’re telling the truth

50 a month [not 50 a week]

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FOIA officer or FOIA processor? I'm a FOIA officer and absolutely love what I do. I manage it for my agency so I really do have the power to make changes, get AI, discovery software, staffing needs, mandate better records. I run a tight ship and we have pretty much no backlog whatsoever.

I will say that FOIA is a sinking ship. I totally understand that you get requests for thousands and thousands of pages, people pay absolutely $0, and then sue you when you don't release 100,000 pages in 20 days. It's ridiculous and out of control. Lawsuits are out of control government wide. Unmanaged email systems are really killing us. It pains me when requesters are just doing bogus searches on vague terms like "climate change" or something and don't have an article they're writing. I believe in government transparency and my mission, but we're swamped!

I often wish I had the ability to speak with other FOIA officers at other agencies.

Have you ever attended a Chief FOIA Officers Council meeting? OIP hosts them.