DoD's Annual FOIA Report

Each year the Defense Department prepares an annual report on its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) activities. As its name implies, the 'Act' requires full (or partial) disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the Government. There are nine exemptions to what must be disclosed including:

• classified information (obviously)
• related to internal personnel rules and practices
• prohibited from disclosure by another federal law
• trade secrets and other confidential business information (can't get your competitors bid information)
• inter agency communications protected by attorney work product or attorney client privilege
• matters of personal privacy
• compiled for law enforcement purposes that meet certain conditions (endanger a case or a life)
• information relating to the supervision of financial institutions
• geological information concerning wells (that's a weird one)

In Fiscal Year 2018, the Defense Department processed more than 54 thousand FOIA requests. Of those 54 thousand requests, only five percent or 2,652 requests were denied based on one of the foregoing exemptions. An additional 15,801 requests were partially granted and partially denied based on the statutory exemptions.

Looking at the data more granular, DCAA (Defense Contract Audit Agency) and DCMA (Defense Contract Audit Agency) processed 103 and 210 cases respectively. For DCAA, about half the cases were closed as having no data responsive to the request. Four requests were denied based on one of the exemptions (probably involving contractor proprietary data) and four other requests were denied because the source of the records sought belonged to another Agency.

For DCMA, 28 of its 210 requests were withdrawn while another 84 requests were denied because the information requested was not an Agency record. DCMA made no 'full' denials but did make 43 partial denials.

The ASBCA (Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals) received 21 requests. One was withdrawn, 15 were denied as having no 'responsive' records, and the remaining five were eight granted in full or in part.

More than half (26,415) of all FOIA requests were to the Army. The Navy was a distant second (10,025) followed by DLA (5,266), and the Air Force (4,216).

You can read the full Annual FOIA report here.

2017 Freedom of Information Report

The Department of Defense recently published its Fiscal Year 2017 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Annual Report, a report that DoD prominently displays on the cover page as costing $583 thousand to prepare. That's only the beginning of the cost to administer FOIA requests in the Department. Department-wide, Defense spent nearly $81 million to respond to 54 thousand requests, an average of $1,500 per request. Is that a wise expenditure of Government funds? Depends on who you ask, we suppose.

Turning to a couple of procurement focused agencies within DoD, the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) and the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA), the report shows that they received 239 and 113 FOIA requests respectively. That must be very demeaning. Together they couldn't even muster up half a percent. The Army had the most requests (25,666) followed by the Navy (10,143), DLA (5,675) and the Air Force (4,594). The Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals (ASBCA) received the fewest requests (11).

Of the 54 thousand requests processed, about 20 thousand were considered full grants and another 15 thousand were partial grants/partial denials. Interestingly, a high percentage of denials by DCMA and DCAA were because the requests pertained to non-Agency records. That could mean a requester was trying to elicit proprietary information about a contractor, perhaps. A fair number of requests were denied on national security grounds.

Overall, it took agencies an average of 16 days to process a "simple" request and 156 days to process "complex" requests. DCMA and DCAA beat this average. It took both Agencies six days to process simple requests and 83 and 26 days respectively to process complex requests.

The report also details FOIA personnel and costs to process requests. DCMA spent $487 thousand to process its 239 requests while DCAA spent  $198 thousand to process its 113 requests. That's an average of $2,038 and $1,752 per request, well above the $1,500 average for all of DoD. Perhaps they're higher because they don't enjoy the economies of scale.

The full report can be accessed here.