FOIA Tales: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly

by Greg Munno on March 18th, 2015

Have you voted in for the biggest FOIA Failure yet? We asked six FOIA experts to pick a case they feel represents a noteworthy failure by a government agency to adequately respond to a FOIA request. Now we want YOU to vote for the worst of the worst. Here you’ll find the case summaries and poll and everything you’ll need to vote. Mobile users might have an easier time voting via the poll at http://wp.me/s4L10q-foiafail

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University specializes in using the Freedom of Information Act to collect, understand, structure, and analyze case-by-case data from federal agencies.

As such, it files a lot of FOIA requests, and has plenty of stories of agency heroics and horrors.

Lo and behold, right in the middle of Sunshine Week, another FOIA story came to TRAC’s door (TRAC administers the FOIA Project and this website).

We’ll call this one “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.”

The Good: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sent TRAC a letter to acknowledged that it had received TRAC’s FOIA request.

The Bad: TRAC sent said FOIA request on July 3, 2014. The acknowledgement was dated March 13, 2015 — 253 days later. We received the letter on March 17 (kudos to the U.S. Postal Service for fulfilling its end of the bargain). The letter does not explain or even acknowledge the delay.

The Ugly: This is the first acknowledgement TRAC has received from the ATF after sending it eight requests dating back to June 18, 2013. All the requests were for basic records related to the agency’s FOIA logs. To date, no data have been received.