Veterans Affairs, Defense, Homeland Security and State pulled up the rear in a review of Freedom of Information Act performance released last week. The Department of Justice was close to the top of the list with a B- grade in the report from the Center for Effective Government, which studied the 15 federal agencies that received the most information requests in 2012.

“The results are sobering,” the report said. “The low scores are not due to impossibly high expectations. In each of three performance areas, at least one agency earned an A, showing that excellence is possible. But the fact that no agency was able to demonstrate excellence across all three areas illustrates the difficulty agencies seem to be having in consistently combining all the elements of an effective disclosure policy.”

The agencies studied received 9 in every 10 FOIA request made, the report said. The analysis focused on three areas:

1. Processing requests for information. (Performance on this made up half the grade).
2. Establishing rules for information access.
3. Creating user-friendly websites.

The five agencies with national security responsibilities only received five scores (out of 20) higher than a D. (See below).

Among the comments for each agency:

• “Strong A grades for its FOIA website and updated disclosure policies propel the overall score for the Department of Justice (DOJ), earning a 95 percent and 92 percent, respectively. However, a 69 percent score in processing, the most heavily weighted section, keeps DOJ from achieving an overall A.”
• “State’s FOIA struggles are fundamental, requiring long-term culture change.”
• “DHS should maintain its focus on improving timeliness, including responding to simple requests within 20 days, and explore how to increase its rate of full grants to requesters.”
• “The Department of Defense (DOD) receives failing grades for all three categories. . . :The agency’s low processing score can be improved by bringing down the average days the agency takes to respond to appeals, bringing down its request backlog, and increasing the percentage of requests fully granted.”
• “The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) earned fairly low scores in all three sections of the scorecard. The VA’s 44 percent score in processing, though, is the area most in need of improvement. “

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