Another year and it can toast its anniversary.
The longest pending federal Freedom of Information Act was filed during the Reagan administration, 20 years ago, in 1987, according to the Knight Open Government Survey from the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
This year's report, "40 Years of FOIA, 20 Years of Delay," was released just two days before the 40th anniversary of the implementation of the federal FOIA on July 4, 1967. The Archive sent FOIA requests for the oldest pending FOIA requests at 87 government agencies and components discovered "not only a broken system, but one immersed in confusion and disarray."
Among the 57 agencies and components that actually responded to the Archives' request, filed in January 2007 — after five months 30 had not even responded — 53 reported a backlog; 12 of whom had requests dating back more than 10 years, and 5 of them reported 17 requests older than 15 years. Those five were the State Department (10), the Justice Department (4), the Air Force (2) and the CIA (1).
Further, 10 agencies reported pending requests to the Archives that were older than what those same agencies told Congress in their annual FOIA compliancy reports. And, among the 40 agencies that responded to the Archive's 2005 and 2007 requests, four reported requests in 2007 that were older than those they'd reported two years prior.
The House of Representatives easily passed FOIA reform legislation earlier this year, but a similar measure is stalled in the Senate on a hold from Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).
The complete Archive FOIA report, and other important information about FOIA and related issues, can be found online.
