An agency created by Congress years ago to promote government transparency by facilitating the treacherous process of obtaining public records has failed to do its job, according to a federal audit.
Is anyone really surprised? With a $1 million infusion from Congress, the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) was promoted with great fanfare in 2009 as an objective ombudsman that would force federal agencies to comply with public records requests. Part of its mission is resolving disputes between federal agencies and those who request records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Judicial Watch has a lot of experience in this area because FOIA is a valuable tool in our mission to promote government transparency and accountability and expose public corruption. In many cases, especially when the stakes are high, federal agencies violate FOIA deadlines—or simply disregard the law all together—and JW must initiate litigation.
OGIS was created precisely to curb a shameful surge in FOIA violations by the U.S. government. In fact, media and government transparency groups across the nation hailed it as a “milestone” that would finally force agencies to be more responsive to FOIA requests from journalists and ordinary citizens. There was great hope that the new office would efficiently mediate disputes over requests and help ease the grueling and costly process of pursuing records when agencies refuse to turn them over.
This has not occurred, according to a federal audit released this week by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress. The OGIS “has not performed the reviews of regulations and notices in a proactive, comprehensive manner, and has not conducted any reviews of agencies’ compliance with the law,” the GAO writes in its report.
