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Federal Reserve Board of Governors

Freedom of Information Office

2015 Chief FOIA Officer Report

The Chief FOIA Officer of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Board), Margaret McCloskey Shanks, Deputy Secretary, hereby submits the Chief FOIA Officer Report on behalf of the Board in accordance with the template provided by the Department of Justice.

Section I: Steps Taken to Apply the Presumption of Openness
The guiding principle underlying the President's FOIA Memorandum and the Attorney General's FOIA Guidelines is the presumption of openness.

Describe the steps your agency has taken to ensure that the presumption of openness is being applied to all decisions involving the FOIA. To do so, you should answer the questions listed below and then include any additional information you would like to describe how your agency is working to apply the presumption of openness.

1. Did your FOIA professionals or the personnel at your agency who have FOIA responsibilities attend any FOIA training or conference during the reporting period such as that provided by the Department of Justice?

Such training or events can include offerings from OIP, your own agency or another agency or organization.

Yes. Several of the Board's FOIA professionals attended FOIA training seminars provided by the Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of Information Policy (OIP). FOIA professional staff also attended a special FOIA training provided by the DOJ at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) on FOIA Exemptions 4 and 5. Additionally, the Board's Freedom of Information Office Manager attended several trainings and workshops provided by the DOJ's OIP, including specialized training on the preparation of the FOIA Annual Report and the Chief FOIA Officer Report. In all, 12 Board employees with core FOIA responsibilities participated in the DOJ training.

2. Provide an estimate of the percentage of your FOIA professionals and staff with FOIA responsibilities who attended substantive FOIA training during this reporting period.

Approximately 75% of the Board's FOIA professionals attended substantive FOIA training during this reporting period.

3. In the 2014 Chief FOIA Officer Report Guidelines, OIP asked agencies to provide a plan for ensuring that core, substantive FOIA training is offered to all agency FOIA professionals at least once each year. Please provide the status of your agency's implementation of this plan.

The Board's FOIA Managers identify and schedule training for both new and experienced employees. FOIA professionals are encouraged to take the DOJ's two-day introductory seminar "Freedom of Information Act for Attorneys and Access Professionals". The Board was not able to schedule an in-house FOIA conference during 2014 as planned. However, approximately 75 % of the Board's FOIA professionals attended off-site core, substantive FOIA training provided by the DOJ. On-site training is being planned for the current fiscal year.

Discretionary Disclosures:

4. Does your agency have a distinct process or system in place to review records for discretionary release? If so, please briefly describe this process. If your agency is decentralized, please specify whether all components at your agency have a process in place for making discretionary releases.

In processing FOIA requests, FOIA staff reviews all exempt records to determine whether a discretionary release is possible. FOIA requests are reviewed for a possible discretionary release at several stages in the process, including by the Board's Chief FOIA Officer and any other staff member who works on the FOIA request. Upon concurrence by Board Counsel, the release will then be processed. To the extent that such releases included information obtained from a supervised entity, any such releases are cleared with the entity that provided the information. When appropriate, requesters are advised of the option of seeking approval of the General Counsel for release of confidential supervisory information to a specified party. See 12 CFR § 261.22.

5. During the reporting period did your agency make any discretionary releases of information?

Yes. The Board made several discretionary releases of exempt information, as further described below in the answer to Question 7.

6. What exemptions would have covered the material released as a matter of discretion?

The information released as a matter of discretion could have been withheld pursuant to FOIA Exemption 8, which consists of information contained in or related to financial institution examination, operating, or condition reports.

7. Provide a narrative description, or some examples of, the types of information that your agency released as a matter of discretion.

The Board made several discretionary releases of confidential supervisory information involving documents reflecting communications between a supervised banking institution and Federal Reserve staff. Although this confidential supervisory information is protected under Exemption 8, the Board chose, in its discretion, to provide these documents in an effort to increase transparency.

8. If your agency was not able to make any discretionary releases of information, please explain why.

N/A

9. If there are any other initiatives undertaken by your agency to ensure that the presumption of openness is being applied, please describe them here.

The Board is committed to transparency and to the presumption of openness. To that effect, the Board undertook several new initiatives in FY 2014, including:


In addition, in an effort to increase the availability of previously (and frequently) requested information without initiating a FOIA request, the Board's public website now provides an extensive data download program of statistical releases and recently published the FRB/US Model, a large-scale estimated general equilibrium model of the U.S. economy that has been in use at the Federal Reserve Board since 1996, designed for detailed analysis of monetary and fiscal policies.

Section II: Steps Taken to Ensure that Your Agency Has an Effective System in Place for Responding to Requests
As the Attorney General emphasized in his FOIA Guidelines, "[a]pplication of the proper disclosure standard is only one part of ensuring transparency. Open government requires not just a presumption of disclosure, but also an effective system for responding to FOIA requests." It is essential that agencies effectively manage their FOIA program.

Please answer the following questions to discuss the steps your agency has taken to ensure that your management of your FOIA program is effective and efficient. You should also include any additional information that describes your agency's efforts in this area.

Processing Procedures:

1. For Fiscal Year 2014, what was the average number of days your agency reported for adjudicating requests expedited processing? Please see Section VIII.A. of your agency's Fiscal Year 2014 Annual FOIA Report.

The average number of days for the Board to adjudicate requests for expedited processing was three.

2. If your agency's average number of days to adjudicate requests for expedited processing was above ten calendar days, please describe the steps your agency will take to ensure that requests for expedited processing are adjudicated within ten calendar days or less. 

N/A

Requester Services:

3. Does your agency notify requesters of the mediation services offered by the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) at the National Archives and Records Administration?

The Board is currently considering revisions to its standard appeal notification language, such as notifying requesters of OGIS mediation.

4. When assessing fees, does your agency provide a breakdown of how FOIA fees were calculated and assessed to the FOIA requester? For example, does your agency explain the amount of fees attributable to search, review, and duplication? See OIP Guidance, "The Importance of Good Communication with FOIA Requesters 2.0: Improving Both the Means and the Content of Requester Communications." (Nov. 22, 2013)

Yes. The Board provides a breakdown of the amount of fees attributable to search and review.

5. If estimated fees are particularly high, does your agency provide an explanation for the estimate to the requester? See id.

Yes. The Board provides an explanation for the amount of fees attributable to search and review. In most instances the Board also provides the requester with suggestions to narrow the request to reduce the amount of fees.

Other Initiatives:

6. If there are any other steps your agency has undertaken to ensure that your FOIA system operates efficiently and effectively, such as conducting self-assessments to find greater efficiencies, improving search processes, eliminating redundancy, etc., please describe them here.

The Board's Freedom of Information (FOI) Office collaborated with Information Technology staff to devise a new FOIA tracking system that would maximize efficiency and effectiveness in the Board's FOIA operations. The innovative FOIA tracking system better enables us to continuously monitor our processes, thereby ensuring that we are handling requests expeditiously. It also produces the Annual FOIA Report in the required XML format and accurately generates statistics for the Quarterly FOIA Reports. The Board's FOIA professionals have also consulted with its Records professionals to develop a uniform system for identifying and reporting search results.

Section III: Steps Taken to Increase Proactive Disclosures
Both the President and Attorney General focused on the need for agencies to work proactively to post information online without waiting for individual requests to be received.

Please answer the following questions to describe the steps your agency has taken to increase the amount of material that is available on your agency websites. In addition to the questions below, you should also describe any additional steps taken by your agency to make and improve proactive disclosures of information.

1. Does your agency have a distinct process or system in place to identify records for proactive disclosure? If so, please describe your agency's process or system.

Each Board Division has a dedicated FOIA liaison whose responsibility includes educating its respective Division staff on the need to identify records that could be the subject of multiple FOIA requests and/or those that would benefit the public by being made available on the Board's public website, www.federalreserve.gov (hereinafter, PubWeb). These FOIA liaisons notify FOIA professional staff of potential records that could be the subject of multiple FOIA requests for proactive disclosure.

2. Does your process or system involve any collaboration with agency staff outside the FOIA office? If so, describe this interaction.

As described in response to the previous question, the Board's FOIA professionals often collaborate with agency staff to identify records for proactive disclosure.

3. Describe your agency's process or system for identifying "frequently requested" records that should be posted online.

When a FOIA request is received, the Board's FOIA Office staff first researches the request to determine if the requested records have been previously released. The Board then identifies "frequently requested" records when it receives at least three similar FOIA requests for a particular record. Additionally, Board staff alerts its FOIA professionals when there could be public interest in certain Board records.

4. Provide examples of material that your agency has proactively disclosed during the past reporting year, including links to the posted material.

During the past reporting year the Board published the following that serve as examples of proactive disclosures:

5. If there are any other steps your agency has taken to increase proactive disclosures, please describe them here.

In addition to the initiatives described in Question 9 of Section I, the Board continued to make available the public portions of resolution plans filed by financial institutions as required by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act).

Section IV: Steps Taken to Greater Utilize Technology
A key component of the President's FOIA Memorandum was the direction to "use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and done by their Government." In addition to using the internet to make proactive disclosures, agencies should also be exploring ways to utilize technology in responding to requests.

Please answer the following questions to describe how your agency is utilizing technology to improve its FOIA administration and the public's access to information. You should also include any additional information that that describes your agency's efforts in this area.

1. Beyond posting new material, is your agency taking steps to make the posted information more useful to the public, especially to the community of individual who regularly access your agency's website?

Yes. The Board emphasizes making information available and up-to-date for all visitors to PubWeb in an easy-to-access format that is also mobile and tablet compatible.  Further, as described below in the response to Question 2, the Board also maintains a significant social media presence in order to provide more avenues to communicate with the public.

2. If yes, please provide examples of such improvements.
If your agency is already posting material in its most useful format, please describe these efforts.
In keeping current with technology, the Federal Reserve System makes available an application (or "app") that is compatible with various types of tablets and smartphones.  The app provides access to a wide range of information from the Board and the 12 regional Reserve Banks.

The Board also uses certain third-party social media sites as additional means of reaching the public and directing people to PubWeb, which is the primary public source of information about the Board. Specifically, the Board maintains an official page or presence on Ustream Leaving the Board, Twitter Leaving the Board, YouTube Leaving the Board, Flickr Leaving the Board, and LinkedIn Leaving the Board, all of which are routinely updated. Visitors to PubWeb can also subscribe to the Board's RSS feeds and/or e-mail notification services alerts for newly available transcripts of testimonies and speeches, articles, press releases, and reports.

3. Has your agency encountered challenges that make it difficult to post records you otherwise would like to post?

Yes.

4. If so, please briefly explain what those challenges are.

The Board requires documents posted to PubWeb to be Section 508 compliant. This process can be time-consuming when applications and documents are voluminous or include elements such as tables, graphs, and footnotes.

Other Initiatives:

5. Did your agency successfully post all four quarterly reports for Fiscal Year 2014?

Yes.

6. If your agency did not successfully post all quarterly reports, with information appearing on FOIA.gov, please explain why and provide your agency's plan for ensuring that such reporting is successful in Fiscal Year 2015.

N/A

7. Do your agency's FOIA professionals use e-mail or other electronic means to communicate with requesters whenever feasible? See OIP Guidance, "The Importance of Good Communication with FOIA Requesters 2.0: Improving Both the Means and the Content of Requester Communications." (Nov. 22, 2013)  If yes, what are the different types of electronic means utilized by your agency to communicate with requesters?

Yes. The Board has provided the public with the ability to submit a FOIA request through electronic means by using an electronic FOIA request form on the Board's website. Unless otherwise indicated in the FOIA request, the Board's FOIA professionals routinely use e-mail to communicate with requesters, including providing status updates and seeking clarification regarding requests. FOIA staff also transmits all follow-up correspondence (such as acknowledgement, extension of time, fee estimate letters, and responses to requests for expedited processing) and the final response letter with applicable responsive documents to requesters electronically.

8. If your agency does not communicate electronically with requesters as a default, are there any limitations or restrictions for the use of such means? If yes, does your agency inform requesters about such limitations? See id.

N/A

Section V: Steps Taken to Improve Timeliness in Responding to Requests and Reducing Backlogs
The President and the Attorney General have emphasized the importance of improving timeliness in responding to requests. This section addresses both time limits and backlog reduction. Backlog reduction is measured both in terms of numbers of backlogged requests or appeals and by looking at whether agencies closed their ten oldest requests, appeals, and consultations. For the figures required in this Section, please use the numbers contained in the specified sections of your agency's 2014 Annual FOIA Report and, when applicable, your agency's 2013 Annual FOIA Report.

Simple Track: Section VII.A of your agency's Annual FOIA Report, entitled "FOIA Requests -- Response Time for All Processed Requests," includes figures that show your agency's average response times for processed requests. For agencies utilizing a multi-track system to process requests, there is a category for "simple" requests, which are those requests that are placed in the agency's fastest (non-expedited) track, based on the low volume and/or simplicity of the records requested.

1. Does your agency utilize a separate track for simple requests?

Yes.

2. If so, for your agency overall, for Fiscal Year 2014, was the average number of days to process simple requests twenty working days or fewer?

Yes. The average number of days to process simple requests was nine.

3. Please provide the percentage of requests processed by your agency in Fiscal Year 2014 that were placed in your simple track.

The percentage of requests processed by the Board in fiscal year 2014 that were placed in the simple track was 48%.

4. If your agency does not track simple requests separately, was the average number of days to process non-expedited requests twenty working days or fewer?

N/A

Backlogs: Section XII.A of your agency's Annual FOIA Report, entitled "Backlogs of FOIA Requests and Administrative Appeals" shows the numbers of any backlogged requests or appeals from the fiscal year. You should refer to these numbers from your Annual FOIA Reports for both Fiscal Year 2013 and Fiscal Year 2014 when completing this section of your Chief FOIA Officer Report.

Backlogged Requests

5.  If your agency had a backlog of requests at the close of Fiscal Year 2014, did that backlog decrease as compared with Fiscal Year 2013?

Yes.

6. If you had a request backlog please report the percentage of requests that make up the backlog out of the total number of requests received by your agency in Fiscal Year 2014. If your agency did not receive any requests in Fiscal Year 2014 and/or has no request backlog, please answer with "N/A."
The percentage of requests that make up the backlog out of the total number of requests received by the Board in fiscal year 2014 is 1% (10 requests).

Backlogged Appeals

7. If your agency had a backlog of administrative appeals in Fiscal Year 2014, did that backlog decrease as compared with the backlog reported at the end of Fiscal Year 2013?
Yes. The Board's backlog of appeals decreased from 1 in Fiscal Year 2013 to 0 in Fiscal Year 2014.

8. If you had an appeal backlog please report the percentage of appeals that make up the backlog out of the total number of appeals received by your agency in Fiscal Year 2014. If your agency did not receive any appeals in Fiscal Year 2014 and/or has no appeal backlog, please answer with "N/A."
N/A

Status of Ten Oldest Requests, Appeals, and Consultations: Section VII.E, entitled "Pending Requests – Ten Oldest Pending Requests," Section VI.C.(5), entitled "Ten Oldest Pending Administrative Appeals," and Section XII.C., entitled "Consultations on FOIA Requests – Ten Oldest Consultations Received from Other Agencies and Pending at Your Agency," show the ten oldest pending requests, appeals, and consultations. You should refer to these numbers from your Annual FOIA Reports for both Fiscal Year 2013 and Fiscal Year 2014 when completing this section of your Chief FOIA Officer Report.

Ten Oldest Requests

9. In Fiscal Year 2014, did your agency close the ten oldest requests that were pending as of the end of Fiscal Year 2013?

Yes.

10. If no, please provide the number of these requests your agency was able to close by the end of the fiscal year, as listed in Section VII.E of your Fiscal Year 2013 Annual FOIA Report. If you had less than ten total oldest requests to close, please indicate that. 

N/A

11. Of the requests your agency was able to close from your ten oldest, please indicate how many of these were closed because the request was withdrawn by the requester. If any were closed because the request was withdrawn, did you provide any interim responses prior to the withdrawal?

One of the 10 oldest requests was withdrawn because the requester no longer needed the information.

Ten Oldest Appeals

12. In Fiscal Year 2014, did your agency close the ten oldest appeals that were reported pending in your Fiscal Year 2013 Annual FOIA Report?

Yes.

13. If no, please provide the number of these appeals your agency was able to close by the end of the fiscal year, as listed in Section VII.C.(5) of your Fiscal Year 2013 Annual FOIA Report. If you had less than ten total oldest appeals to close, please indicate that.

N/A

Ten Oldest Consultations

14. In Fiscal Year 2014, did your agency close the ten oldest consultations received by your agency and pending as of the end of Fiscal Year 2013?

No.

15. If no, please provide the number of these consultations your agency was able to close by the end of the fiscal year, as listed in Section XII.C. of your Fiscal Year 2013 Annual FOIA Report.

The Board closed one of two consultations pending as of the end of Fiscal Year 2013.

Additional Information on Ten Oldest Requests, Appeals, and Consultations & Plans:

16. Briefly explain any obstacles your agency faced in closing its ten oldest requests, appeals, and consultations from Fiscal Year 2013.

The one pending consultation from Fiscal Year 2013 required the Board's FOIA professionals to confer with Board staff to conduct a thorough review of the information to determine releasability. Additional background research was also necessary to frame the context of the information at issue. This consultation has now been closed.

17. If your agency was unable to close any of its ten oldest requests because you were waiting to hear back from other agencies on consultations you sent, please provide the date the request was initially received by your agency, the date when your agency sent the consultation, and the date when you last contacted the agency where the consultation was pending.

N/A

18. If your agency did not close its ten oldest pending requests, appeals, or consultations, please provide a plan describing how your agency intends to close those "ten oldest" requests, appeals, and consultations during Fiscal Year 2015.

The Board's one pending consultation has been resolved.

Use of FOIA's Law Enforcement "Exclusions"

Did your agency invoke a statutory exclusion, 5 U.S.C. § 552(c)(1), (2), (3), during Fiscal Year 2014?

No. The Board did not invoke a statutory exclusion during fiscal year 2014.

If so, what was the total number of times exclusions were invoked?

N/A

Success Story
Out of all the activities undertaken by your agency since March 2014 to increase transparency and improve FOIA administration, please briefly describe here at least one success story that you would like to highlight as emblematic of your agency's efforts. The success story can come from any one of the five key areas. As noted above, these agency success stories will be highlighted during Sunshine Week by OIP. To facilitate this process, all agencies should use bullets to describe their success story and limit their text to a half page. The success story is designed to be a quick summary of a key achievement. A complete description of all your efforts will be contained in the body of your Chief FOIA Officer Report.

Among our major achievements this year include the following two items:

  1. During this fiscal year, the Board closed the 10 oldest pending FOIA requests and reduced the backlog to 10 FOIA requests. To date, the Board has closed five of the 10 requests in the backlog.
  1. The Board's Freedom of Information (FOI) Office collaborated with Information Technology staff to devise a new FOIA tracking system in an effort to maximize efficiency and effectiveness in the Board's FOIA operations. As such, the innovative FOIA tracking system was designed for the Board's specific needs and concerns, and includes enhanced features that improve the monitoring of FOIA requests, produce the Annual FOIA Report in the required XML format, and accurately generate statistics for the Quarterly FOIA Reports.
Last update: March 16, 2015