Blog Post
Office of Information Policy Receives ASAP's Directors' Award for Superior Public Service
The Office of Information Policy (OIP) is honored to be selected by the American Society of Access Professionals (ASAP) as the recipient its Directors' Award for Superior Public Service. The award is among the highest honors granted by ASAP and recognizes OIP's "superior contribution, sustained excellence and special benefit provided to the Society and to the public with respect to access, privacy and fair information laws, policies and practices."
ASAP is an independent, nongovernmental association comprised of FOIA and Privacy Act professionals, journalists, members of open government groups, and college and university faculty and staff "dedicated to bringing government FOIA and Privacy Act personnel in touch with the requester community." OIP has a long history of providing instructors to ASAP’s training programs.
Since the issuance of President Obama's FOIA Memorandum and Attorney General Holder's FOIA Guidelines, we have issued guidance to agencies on their implementation and addressed a range of issues designed to improve FOIA administration. Within this past year, we have released the following guidance:
- Guidance establishing procedures that streamline the referral and consultation process, enhance agency accountability for the handling of these records, and ensure that FOIA requesters are not disadvantaged by the process,
- Guidance emphasizing the importance of agencies reducing the age of any FOIA backlogs by closing their ten oldest pending requests and consultations,
- Guidance for further improvement based on agencies' 2012 Chief FOIA Officer Reports, including encouraging agencies to consider the use of more advanced technologies for the core elements of FOIA processing, to consider multi-track processing as a means of improving timeliness, and to make it a priority to close their ten oldest pending requests each year, and
- New guidance on implementing of the FOIA's statutory exclusions that ensures greater transparency and accountability.
Updated August 6, 2014
Topic
FOIA
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