Almost five and a half years ago we at OGIS recommended to Congress that the development of a governmentwide FOIA web portal could improve public access to government information. Now, thanks to ongoing collaboration between the Office of Management and Budget (OMB and the Office of Information Policy at the Department of Justice (DOJ) and 18F, the digital services agency within the General Services Administration, we are closer than ever to having a National FOIA Portal.
Along with recommending the creation of the unified portal, OGIS was an early promoter of the effort to develop and expand FOIAonline, a multi-agency web platform that accepts FOIA requests, stores them in a repository for processing by agency staff, and allows an agency to post the released records in a centralized FOIA e-reading room. As we emphasized at the time, FOIAonline improved the experience for requesters, and saved taxpayers’ money by sharing agency resources and repurposing existing technology. FOIAonline also reduces the administrative burden on agencies since requester contact information is automatically stored in the system, and agencies can use the portal to communicate with the requester. Six of the 100-odd federal agencies that accept FOIA requests were a part of the FOIAonline launch, including part of the National Archives. As shown in 18F’s research while developing the National FOIA Portal, 10 percent of agencies now participate in FOIAonline, representing 17 percent of the total volume of requests processed by the federal government.