Nearly half (50 out of 101) of all federal agencies have still not updated their Freedom of Information Act regulations
to comply with Congress's 2007 FOIA amendments, and even more agencies (55 of 101) have FOIA regulations that predate and ignore President Obama's and
Attorney General Holder's 2009 guidance for a "presumption of disclosure," according to the new National Security Archive FOIA Audit released today to mark
Sunshine Week.
Congress amended the Freedom of Information Act in 2007 to prohibit agencies from charging processing fees if they missed their response deadlines, to
include new online journalists in the fee waiver category for the media, to order agencies to cooperate with the new FOIA ombudsman (the Office of
Government Information Services, OGIS), and to require reports of specific data on their FOIA output, among other provisions co-authored by Senators
Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and John Cornyn (R-TX). But half the government has yet to incorporate these changes in their regulations, according to the latest
National Security Archive FOIA Audit.
After President Obama's "Day One" commitments to open government, Attorney General Eric Holder issued new FOIA guidance on March 19, 2009, declaring that agencies should adopt a "presumption of disclosure," encourage discretionary
releases if there was no foreseeable harm (even if technically covered by an exemption), proactively post the records of greatest public interest online,
and remove "unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles" from the FOIA process. But five years later, the Archive found a majority of agencies have old regulations
that simply ignore this guidance.