6: FOIA Requests
Ensure that FOIA activities are fully integrated into the Department's Open Government Plan and implementation efforts. Other Information:
The Department of the Treasury is committed to open and transparent government, to ensure so that the American public has
access to as much information as possible while ensuring the protection of personal privacy, as well as confidential, privileged,
or proprietary information. We are ensuring that FOIA activities are fully integrated into the Department's Open Government
Plan and implementation efforts. We are committed to continuing process improvements to eliminate the backlog of FOIA requests.
Since FY06 we have reduced our FOIA backlog by over 71% (see Table 1). The Department is completing a Lean Six Sigma review
of our entire FOIA process from end to end to identify how we can continue to improve our response time for FOIA processing.
Treasury’s high-level commitment to ensuring that the President’s directive regarding the presumption of disclosure is applied
to all decisions involving the FOIA, including the increased proactive disclosures and discretionary releases within the legal
responsibility to protect national security, personal privacy, privileged records, and other protected interests. Concrete
steps to reduce backlogs and improve timeliness in responding to requests include: •Conducting a systemic review of the entire
FOIA process within the agency to identify roadblocks and to improve timeliness. •Analyzing the workload involved in responding
to FOIA requests and determining the appropriate resource levels and then ensuring that those resources are allocated. •Setting
up regular meetings between FOIA professionals and Treasury’s Chief FOIA Officer to ensure an established dialogue between
those officials, so that the Chief FOIA Officer can troubleshoot problems and facilitate timely responses. In addition to
FOIA personnel, Treasury relies on a broad range of senior-level agency personnel, including Congressional Affairs, Public
Affairs, legal and policy staff, and relevant subject-matter experts, to identify material for proactive release. Treasury
is committed to cooperate with the new Office of Government Information Services’ FOIA mediation efforts.
Objective(s):
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