Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Delays by US Government Agencies

Posted by: Jan Meisels Allen

The New York Times has an article on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and the long delays by government agencies in complying, The Courts have ruled the agencies must comply in 20 days, but some agencies have taken 20 years. Unfortunately, the National Archives has a request pending since 1992. There is a chart comparing different agencies, if you click where it says "multimedia" ( on the left- below the bar graph) and a long wait for
information--which shows the most egregious agencies, including the National Archives, with the oldest pending request and in 2010 that request was 6656 days old.
http://tinyurl.com/6ox276v

original url:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/us/slow-freedom-of-information-responses-cloud-a-window-into-washington.html?emc=eta1

Thank you to Paul Silverstone, IAJGS Treasurer and IAJGS PRAMC member for sharing this article with us.

Jan Meisels Allen
IAJGS Vice President
Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee