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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Office of Inspector General

At a Glance

15-N-0261
August 20, 2015

Why We Did This Review

On June 23, 2015, we received
a congressional request on
whether involvement of non-
career U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA)
officials (political appointees)
occurred and resulted in undue
delay of responses to Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA)
requests, or the withholding of
any document or portion
thereof that would have
otherwise been released but for
the non-career official's
involvement in the process.
The request also sought a
written certification from the
EPA's Chief FOIA Officer that
(1) no non-career officials were
involved in the agency's
response to any FOIA request;
or (2) if such involvement
occurred, that it never resulted
in an undue delay or the
provision of less information
than would have been provided
but for the involvement of non-
career officials. We were asked
to provide a response to these
issues within 60 days.

This report addresses the
following EPA goal or
cross-agency strategy:

• Embracing EPA as a high-
performing organization.

Send all inquiries to our public
affairs office at (202) 566-2391
or visit www.epa.gov/oia.

The full report is at:

www.epa.gov/oig/reports/2015/

20150820-15-N-0261.pdf

Response to Congressional Request Concerning
Political Interference in Release of Documents
Under the Freedom of Information Act

What We Found

We did not find any indications of political interference or delay in the release
of FOIA documents. According to the EPA, while there have been delays in
responding to FOIA requests, those delays were generally due to the
complexity or volume of information requested. We made our determinations
based on our review of FOIA policies and procedures; and discussions with all
FOIA Coordinators in EPA's program offices and FOIA Officers in EPA's
regional offices, as well as with three political appointees.

We requested a written certification from the EPA's Chief FOIA Officer that:
(1) no non-career officials were involved in the agency's response to any FOIA
request; or (2) if such involvement occurred, that it never resulted in an undue
delay or the provision of less information than would have otherwise been
provided. The EPA's Chief FOIA Officer explained that she did not find the
request to be feasible given that all employees, both career and non-career,
have FOIA responsibilities.

Due to the timeframes associated with this request, this report was not
conducted in accordance with generally accepted government auditing
standards.

FOIAonline Deployed

To improve its FOIA management and processes, the EPA in October 2012
deployed FOIAonline as its new FOIA management system. FOIAonline
automates core processing and administrative activities. All FOIA requests
received at the EPA are managed throughout their lifecycle in FOIAonline.
Records released by the EPA in response to a FOIA request are entered into
FOIAonline for public viewing and searching unless the volume of paper
records is very large and conversion to electronic format is not practical, or the
response is subject to special handling requirements or policies.

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