Public Comments Submitted by Harry Duty

My experience deals more with FDA FOIA.

When I request FOIA documents from FDA, I normally do not receive a "determination" as to if the agency will comply with the FOIA request letter within 20 working days. When I request records through FDA, I do not receive information as to which section FDA assigns the FOIA request to. There have been requests assigned to multiple parts of the agency without my awareness. The model determination letter OGIS proposed contains sections I normally receive for FOIA requests. Full Grant/Partial Grant/Full Denial. If I do not receive specific information, I have to file an appeal with the agency for refusing to provide the adequate information.

I don't understand why OGIS is providing "dispute resolution" services for FOIA requests because I've rarely to never had any actual success with OGIS and dispute resolution. It would be appropriate that OGIS add to the letter something to the effect of "we allow agencies to review and make changes to official OGIS communication but we do not allow the same opportunity for the requestor."

As OGIS has things formatted now, OGIS is trying to make it appear that they are neutral and from the requestor experience, OGIS is more of a branch helping and protecting agencies over requestors. This is not reflected in the letter and informing the requestor that OGIS offers requestors different resources than agencies is very important information that should be communicated. I believe it's also very important that OGIS inform the consumer in letters that OGIS may not actually deal with the dispute. OGIS is notorious for not actually dealing with disputes and instead ignoring them. This should be reflected in the letter as well.