Good luck. There's already a tremendous backlog, and Bush has been playing new games with FOIA:
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[1/31/08] This week, funds for the Office of Government Information Services, which handles FOIA requests, were transferred to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice is much more subject to influence by the White House—so much so that they may not even carry out the basic FOIA-related functions of the previous office. “By shifting the funding to the Justice Department, OMB would effectively eliminate the office, because it appears no similar operation would be created there,” according to an aide to Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT).
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Think Again: Your Government: Access Denied
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Even when documents were not withheld de jure, administration officials often withheld them de facto. When People for the American Way sought documents on prisoners’ cases being litigated in secret, the Justice Department required it to pay $373,000 in search fees before officials would even look. “It’s become much, much harder to get responses to FOIA requests, and it’s taking much, much longer,” David Schulz, the attorney who helps the Associated Press with FOIA requests, explained to a reporter. “Agencies seem to view their role as coming up with techniques to keep information secret rather than the other way around. That’s completely contrary to the goal of the act.”
The Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy notes that “Over the past nine years, the number of FOIA requests processed has fallen 20 percent, the number of FOIA personnel is down 10 percent, the backlog [of pending requests] has tripled, and costs of handling a request are up 79 percent.”
Responding to pressure over the abuse of the FOIA Act, Bush issued an executive order in December 2005 mandating that agencies respond better to FOIA requests. But little progress was made. The Department of Justice issued a report attempting to show progress on the issue, but it approached farce, with statistics and graphics in the report contradicting the claims made on the previous page. The DOJ reported that more than half of the agencies successfully met their FOIA milestones, “and that 90 percent made meaningful progress.” But the report’s graphics show that only 11 of 25 agencies met all their milestones, and three agencies did not meet a single target.
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There's something uniquely modern-Republican-math about those figures:
10% less staff; 20% fewer requests processed; 179% costs
Heckuvajob, Brownie!
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