The Air Force, which was recently named as the worst federal agency in dealing with Freedom of Information Act requests, is developing a new system to manage FOIA requests servicewide.
The National Security Archives had criticized the service for numerous reasons, including that it fails to acknowledge FOIA requests, loses requests, fails to process requests, tries to discourage the public from pursuing requests, fails to respond to inquiries about the status of the requests and lets requests languish while records are destroyed or transferred to other agencies.
But in an interview with Federal Computer Week, Air Force officials defended their handling of FOIA requests and discussed forthcoming improvements to the FOIA system.
The new system, scheduled for implementation Oct. 1, is based on a similar application the Army has been using for the past two years. Air Force FACTS will be a Web-based system, hosted on the Air Force portal, where employees of the service can log on to check the status of requests being processed, said Larry Shade, chief of the Air Force’s information management policy branch. The Air Combat Command in Langley Air Force Base, Va., has been testing the new software system for over a year, he added.
“Our FOIA process has room for improvements,” acknowledged Brig. Gen. Rick Dinkins, deputy director of the policy, planning and resources directorate, warfighting integration and chief information office. Still, the Air Force processes more than 10,000 requests a year and has not exceeded the congressionally mandated 20-day median time for processing requests, he said.
Shade said that security clearance issues and interaction with other agencies has exacerbated the Air Force’s problems in dealing with requests. “We’re at the mercy of [other agencies’] FOIA programs,” he said.
Although consistency across the Air Force is important, FOIA is best managed at the component level, according to Dinkins. Therefore, Air Force headquarters will continue to let individual commands direct their FOIA efforts.
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