About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

GGD-93-47R 1 (1993-06-10)

handle is hein.gao/gaobackip0001 and id is 1 raw text is: nited States General Accounting Office Washington, D.C. 20548 149364 B-253513 June 10, 1993 The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy Chairman, Subcommittee on Technology and the Law Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate Dear Mr. Chairman: This letter responds to your inquiry about the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) retention of fees charged for processing information requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)l. You asked if FDA has shortened its processing time for FOIA requests since 1990, when it was allowed to retain fees charged for responding to requests. To answer this, we discussed FDA's experience with FDA officials and obtained request processing workload data for 2 years before and 2 years after the fee retention authorization was granted. BACKGROUND Under the FOIA, federal agencies can charge reasonable fees for responding to requests for information. Based on the requester, agencies are allowed to charge for some, but not all, of the research, review, and reproduction costs associated with requests. However, collected fees must be deposited in the U.S. Treasury and are not available for discretionary use by the collecting agency. The objective is to recover some of the cost to the federal government but not allow agencies to use fees to discourage information requesters. Starting in December 1990, Public Law 101-635 authorized FDA to retain the FOIA fees. The intent was that fee retention would improve FDA's responsiveness to FOIA requests. According to FDA, in 1990, it had one of the highest FOIA request workloads among federal agencies, accounting for about 10 percent of an annual 490,000 total federal requests. 5 5 U.S.C. 552. GAO/GGD-93-47R, FDA's FOIA Fees AVI.S~

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most