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REPORT CONTENTS

Executive Summary

E-Stars and E-Delinquents

Introduction

Electronic Reading Rooms: File Not Found

FOIA Guidance for the Public: File Not Found

FOIA Web Sites: Missing Links

Conclusion

Methodology

Bibliography

Appendix One: Glossary of Agency Acronyms (PDF-57 KB)

Appendix Two: Glossary of Internet Terminology (PDF-57 KB)

Appendix Three: Web Site Review Data (PDF-81 KB)

Appendix Four: Web Site Review Template (PDF-128 KB)

Archive's Letters to E-Delinquents

Sunshine Week Homepage

In passing the E-FOIA amendments, Congress sought to require agencies to use the rapidly developing electronic communications tools of the World Wide Web and the Internet to communicate with the public. The federal government now has a significant presence on the Web, with thousands of individual sites government-wide. Today, 73% of the adult public has Internet access. As Americans increasingly turn to the Internet for a broad range of everyday needs, from research and financial matters to social interactions and shopping, it is only logical that they also look to government Web sites to provide information and services.

The accessibility of the FOIA Web site to the public is an obvious requirement that flows not only from the statutory provisions but also from the daily course of modern life. In this regard, the structure, design, and maintenance of agency FOIA sites are integral to E-FOIA compliance. Because of the vast and sprawling nature of the Internet, navigational structure and organization are key components of any Web site. A site that is filled with helpful information but is not organized in such a way that the information can be easily located and accessed is not a useful site.

PROBLEM: AGENCY WEB SITES FAIL TO MAKE FOIA PROGRAMS UNDERSTANDABLE AND ACCESSIBLE

SOME AGENCY HOME PAGE LINKS ARE NOT EFFECTIVE

No FOIA Link Hidden FOIA Link BIA (DIA) BOP (DOJ) EPA-2 OPM ORO (DOE) RD (USDA) USTR NSA FERC FLRA FMC NRC OSTP SSA FAA

DOJ gives agencies clear direction on how to organize their electronic FOIA information: "Web users need to be able to access your FOIA home page quickly and simply from your agency's home page. This point cannot be made too emphatically. Therefore, on your agency's home page there should be a link that is unquestionably the link to your FOIA site." Records that can be found only by someone with extensive computer or Web experience, or only by searching or clicking through a complex chain of links are, in effect, inaccessible to the general public.

Most agencies and components-95% of those we reviewed-have a FOIA link on their main agency home page. Notable agencies that do not link to FOIA information from their home pages include the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), Oak Ridge Operations Office (ORO), Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), Bureau of Prisons (BOP), EPA Region 2 (EPA-2), and Office of Rural Development (RD). Most agencies also follow DOJ's recommendation to title the link "FOIA" or "Freedom of Information Act."

A few agencies use what DOJ refers to as "obscure, inadequate links." Two agencies-the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and Federal Maritime Commission (FMC)-have labeled the FOIA links on their home pages "Electronic Reading Room," with no reference to FOIA. Several others have FOIA links that appear within rollover menus, only visible when the cursor moves over them. For example, the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) has a FOIA link located in a rollover menu entitled "Introduction to the FLRA." Similarly, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has placed its FOIA link inside a rollover menu entitled "Useful Links." These types of links do not provide the public easy access to the FOIA Web site.

Placement of the FOIA link within the home page varies widely. While most agencies do satisfy the basic requirement, not all FOIA links are created equally. Our reviews found that placement breaks down as follows:

DOJ emphasizes the need for a FOIA link that can be accessed "quickly and simply" and is "readily accessible to the most inexperienced user." We found that 51% of agencies place the link at the very bottom of their home page. Some of these links are adequate because the text is large enough and visible when a user arrives on the page. In cases where the home page is long, however, users must scroll down to find what is usually a small link in grey text alongside the copyright notice and Webmaster contact information. Such placement makes FOIA appear to be a mere formality or part of the "fine print," rather than a central tool for members of the public to learn about their government.

MANY AGENCY WEB SITES ARE POORLY ORGANIZED AND DIFFICULT TO NAVIGATE

The most common general criticism that arose through our Web site review was that agency sites were disorganized, poorly structured, and difficult to navigate. In some cases, the design and structure of the sites made finding basic information challenging. The most problematic sites are those that provide copious amounts of information but are so poorly organized and difficult to navigate that the information is virtually useless.

Many FOIA pages are characterized by poorly-identified and improperly-placed links to move through the sites. In some cases, links are inappropriately named, ambiguous, or redundant. For example, the Department of the Interior (DOI) site has a static FOIA navigation bar on the left side of each FOIA page, but the links do not communicate to the user what is contained on each page: there is one link entitled "FOIA Contacts" and another "FOIA Service Centers/Liaisons," but each includes contact information for different offices and bureaus; one link for the "Electronic Reading Room" contains some documents, and a nearby link to "Frequently Requested Documents" leads to a page with a variety of required records, including FOIA annual reports. This haphazard approach is confusing to users.

Very few agencies have consistent links to the most important FOIA information within the FOIA pages. Most agency Web sites have an overarching navigation scheme for the entire site, with static links on each page that allow users to move through various sections of the general site. Almost none have that structure for their FOIA pages. The absence of static links to bring users back to important information makes it likely that users will get lost on the Web site. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) FOIA site is an example of the difficulties that arise when a FOIA site lacks good navigation. Although this site is full of useful information about making a FOIA request and contains many publicly-available materials, it is very difficult to navigate. A box with "Helpful Links" appears only on the first page, and after several clicks to find FOIA guidance-for example, to "Making a FOIA Request" and then to a subsequent page about "Fees and Fee Waivers"-it takes several more non-intuitive clicks to get back to the main FOIA page where other relevant links are located. Another example of poor link placement is the Department of the Army FOIA site, which uses rollover menus containing basic FOIA-related links, including some for required documents. The menus are difficult to read and may not be fully functional in some Web browsers or accessible for some users with disabilities. Moreover, the designated links within each menu are ambiguous and redundant.

MANY FOIA SITES LACK UP-TO-DATE AND ACCURATE CONTENT AND LINKS

Many agencies do not provide a date when the site was last updated, so there is no way to determine the timeliness of the information. DOJ's recommendations regarding key elements of a good FOIA page emphasize "the accuracy and timeliness of the information on the page and the currency of links." DOJ directs agencies to "thoroughly review each aspect of their FOIA home pages on at least a quarterly basis." In several cases, we found sites that had not been updated for a year or more prior to the time of the review.

Another problem that plagues many FOIA sites is the presence of incorrect information. For example, a member of the National Security Archive staff was searching for a fax number to send a request to Air Materiel Command, a component of the Air Force. The only list of contact information we could find, buried deep on the Air Force FOIA site, provided a fax number for the component. However, the number given was not an Air Force fax at all, but rather the phone number for a patient room in a hospital. We could not locate a working fax number for Air Materiel Command despite extensive research, and our phone calls to the Air Materiel Command FOIA office went unreturned.

Other pages appear outdated because of numerous broken links or obsolete information. For example, in the section of the VA electronic reading room entitled "Agency Policy" (which actually includes links to policy documents as well as manuals and legal materials related to adjudications and appeals), nearly half of the links listed on the page were broken. Although upon cursory inspection it appears that the VA had posted E-FOIA required records in a number of important categories, in actuality the information available on this site is very limited because of the problems in accessing the links. While VA may have made some initial effort to set up this portion of its FOIA site, VA has failed to check the site for accuracy or follow up regularly to ensure that links continue to function.

SOME AGENCY WEB SITES EMPLOY FORMATS AND TECHNOLOGY THAT ARE EITHER DYSFUNCTIONAL OR INACCESSIBLE TO MANY USERS

Several agencies provide information in multiple formats (e.g., Microsoft Word, PDF, Microsoft Excel, HTML, and even "zipped" files). While some of these formats are common, easy to use, and the only reasonable format for the information they convey, others may be unfamiliar to many users or inaccessible to people using public computers. In particular, it is very difficult to navigate a site when various links lead to materials in different formats and from different sources that are not identified as such.

Some agencies also employ advanced Web design technologies to produce visually stimulating multimedia elements that cannot be accessed by all users. The most common of these is Adobe Flash, which requires installation of the Flash Player on a user's computer in order for the Web site to function fully. The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) site in particular includes a FOIA tutorial in the form of a Flash show-a combination of text, graphics, and animation that plays as a video clip. The video is slow to load, and the only way to find certain guidance is by viewing the clip, which many less technologically-advanced users may not be able to do.

ELECTRONIC READING ROOMS ON MANY SITES ARE NOT WELL IDENTIFIED AND ARE DIFFICULT TO LOCATE OR ACCESS

Only two-thirds of the reviewed agencies actually refer to a portion of their site as an "electronic reading room," despite the fact that DOJ consistently uses this term in its guidance. This disparity could be confusing to members of the public using various agency Web sites. Other designations used by some agencies include:

• "Document Center" (Carlsbad Field Office)
• "Documents Online" (National Science Foundation)
• "Popular FOIA Requests" (Office of Thrift Supervision)
• "Hot FOIAs" (Mine Safety & Health Administration and Employment Standards Administration)
• "Hot Docs" (National Park Service)
• "Current Index" (Farm Credit Administration)

SOLUTION: AGENCIES SHOULD DESIGN FOIA SITES TO ENSURE SMOOTH NAVIGATION AND EASY ACCESS TO REQUIRED INFORMATION

AGENCIES SHOULD LABEL FOIA LINKS APPROPRIATELY AND DISPLAY THEM PROMINENTLY ON THEIR HOME PAGES

Although nothing in the statute requires an agency's FOIA link to be of a certain size or prominence on the home page, some links are easier to find than others. Agencies should give their FOIA links sufficiently prominent placement on their home pages for the links to be viewed by a user without scrolling or taking any other action on the page. Only a handful of agencies have adopted this best practice. For example, the Federal Trade Commission Web site displays a FOIA tab just below the site header in a main navigation bar with seven other general administrative links for the agency. Other agencies-including the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Transportation-place their FOIA links in navigation bars running down the side of the page with other essential links for users of the agency Web site. These links are clear and readable, fulfilling E-FOIA's purpose of easy access.

AGENCIES SHOULD USE CLEAR, TRANSPARENT NAVIGATIONAL SCHEMES ON THEIR FOIA PAGES AND THROUGHOUT THEIR WEB SITES

The Webby Award has become a standard for evaluating all types of Web sites and commending Internet best practices. Structure and navigation of sites is one of the key judging areas, and federal agencies should take the organization's basic criteria to heart in assessing their own FOIA Web sites: "Sites with good structure and navigation are consistent, intuitive and transparent. They allow you to form a mental model of the information provided, where to find things, and what to expect when you click. Good navigation gets you where you want to go quickly and offers easy access to the breadth and dept of the site's content."

There are many resources available for Web designers to assist with improving navigation and usability of sites. Most importantly, the federal government itself provides extensive support for agency Web site development, primarily through the Interagency Committee on Government Information, established and overseen by OMB. Many of the agency home pages and Web sites generally do follow the basic government usability guidelines, but most of the FOIA sites appear to have been left behind when good Web practices were adopted agency-wide. It should not, therefore, be a difficult step for agencies to upgrade deficient sites to make FOIA-related materials more accessible.

A few very basic additions and revisions to some of the organizationally deficient FOIA sites could make a significant difference in the usability and user-friendliness of these sites. In particular, agencies should use a consistent navigation bar within their FOIA pages to direct users to the most significant FOIA-related information. A static navigation scheme also helps to ensure visual consistency and ease of use. Links within these static menus should be simple, intuitive and provide a roadmap that does not leave users guessing where to click to find the information they are seeking. Electronic reading rooms within the site should be clearly labeled as such, so that users can easily locate the required records on an agency site and so that Congress can effectively assess the compliance of all agencies.

AGENCIES SHOULD FORMAT THEIR SITES TO BE ACCESSIBLE TO THE GREATEST NUMBER OF POTENTIAL USERS

HTML pages should be the standard format for essential information and guidance for requesters, where possible, because basic HTML can be viewed by all users, including those with older platforms or slower Internet connections. Agencies should never use advanced Web technologies as the only means to convey information on their sites. When agencies appeal to Web-savvy users, they should be mindful of not leaving others-those with limited skills or technology resources-behind. If an agency chooses to provide information in several different formats, these options should be clear and easy to find. NASA accomplishes this by offering a Flash version, a regular HTML version (text and images), and a text-only version of its comprehensive site. The Inter-American Foundation uses Flash technology but offers a non-Flash version of its site as well.
For documents not originally in electronic form, agencies should post the files as PDFs because PDF is the format that best preserves the integrity of records. However, agencies that make documents available in PDF form should include an obvious link to download the free Adobe PDF viewer, which can be used with all common computer platforms.

AGENCIES SHOULD SEEK PUBLIC FEEDBACK ON THEIR WEB SITES

Agencies should solicit and consider public feedback from FOIA requesters and others who regularly use the sites. In a noteworthy effort, the Department of State in December 2006 held a forum for the public to comment on its FOIA Web site as part of an effort to enhance the site and improve FOIA processing under Executive Order 13,392. This forum gave frequent requesters an opportunity to suggest improvements, including revising the navigation structure and link titles throughout the site. The State Department continues to show an interest in making its Web site, and its FOIA program, effective, efficient, and user-friendly. Several other agencies have included pop-up comment forms on their pages that allow users to rate their experiences in real time. This type of process for feedback could be very useful, but the forms we saw generally only allowed for a very basic determination of whether or not the site was helpful but no specific comments or suggestions.

PROBLEM: MAIN AGENCIES FAIL TO COORDINATE THEIR COMPONENTS' FOIA PROGRAMS

Many Departments and other large agencies are organized in a decentralized manner. At some agencies, such as Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and DOD, separate components are responsible for very different programs. Other agencies, such as the Department of Energy (DOE), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and VA, have components or field offices with regionally defined responsibilities. In many cases, these agencies have decentralized FOIA programs, which means that each of the components receives, processes, and responds directly to FOIA requests from members of the public. Some agencies, such as DOD, have individual components that are also decentralized, with sub-components that maintain their own FOIA programs.

There are benefits to decentralization. It puts responsibility for finding and processing records in the hands of the people who know them best. A major disadvantage, however, is that it can create a challenging maze for the ordinary FOIA requester to navigate. Our reviews found that the deficiencies in the organization of FOIA Web pages tended to be magnified when the agency is decentralized. In such cases, the absence of any overall FOIA leadership within the agency has led to disparate and confusing Web pages-and practices-at most of the agencies.

Generally, components of decentralized agencies do maintain their own FOIA sites, and DOJ guidance endorses this practice in most cases. But our reviews revealed that compliance with E-FOIA across components was inconsistent and, in some cases, components lacked FOIA pages entirely when the agency's Web site scheme suggested that each component was supposed to maintain its own FOIA page.

SOME COMPONENT FOIA PAGES AND ELECTRONIC READING ROOMS ARE DIFFICULT TO LOCATE OR INACCESSIBLE FROM MAIN AGENCY SITES

Of the major agencies with components, 38% did not include links to their component FOIA Web pages and 29% did not have FOIA contact information for their components. While many components maintain their own FOIA Web pages and electronic reading rooms, there are not always links to these sites from the main agency FOIA Web page. Without contact information and links, members of the public may never find the resources housed on the component pages and may indeed never discover that the components exist.

In other cases, components or sub-components do not maintain their own FOIA sites. When an agency neglects to provide information about components that is necessary to file requests, requesters are left without guidance. For example, the Air Force FOIA pages do not contain adequate guidance or an electronic reading room with required documents. Instead, what is called an "Electronic Reading Room" is merely a page with links (many broken) to the main Web site for each Air Force sub-component. The requester must then sift through these Web sites to find information on how to file a FOIA request with each of these subcomponents.

AGENCY GUIDANCE REGARDING COMPONENTS IS INADEQUATE IN MANY CASES

There is significant disparity in how component sites provide guidance on submitting FOIA requests. In some cases, components provide their own FOIA guidance. In other cases, components provide only very limited or partial guidance and rely heavily on the main agency's FOIA Web page for other information. On sites with this type of organization, it can be very difficult to navigate between the component and the main agency, and links to agency-wide guidance send a user back to the main site with no easy way to return to the component FOIA page.

Contact information and basic guidance for each component is not provided on component Web sites in all cases. FEMA, a component of DHS, exhibits this problem because the component site provides no address or fax number for filing a request. Guidance links lead back to the main DHS FOIA site, where a user must search through several pages to find component-by-component contact information giving details about how to send a request to FEMA.

In decentralized agencies, it is often unclear which component is responsible for what types of records. A FOIA requester who is not familiar with the structure and organization of a large agency may be lost on some FOIA sites. Many large agencies specifically direct that requests should be filed with the component the requester believes holds the information. But in some cases, there are minimal, if any, descriptions of the components' record holdings, and the vast majority of components have not complied with the record indexing requirements in the statute. Therefore, a requester is left either to guess blindly about where to file the request or contact the main FOIA office or one or more component offices to get more details when such information could simply be posted on the agencies' and components' FOIA sites.

SOLUTION: AGENCIES MUST GUIDE AND PROVIDE OVERSIGHT FOR DECENTRALIZED COMPONENTS

AGENCIES SHOULD ISSUE GUIDELINES TO COMPONENTS AND PROVIDE ASSISTANCE IN DEVELOPING WEB SITES COMPLIANT WITH E-FOIA

Agency-wide compliance with E-FOIA is the responsibility of each agency, whether or not its FOIA processing is decentralized. Agencies should issue guidance to all components and ensure that the components are complying with all E-FOIA requirements. The responsibility for compliance should not be pushed onto the individual components.

In particular, agencies should assist their components by providing a template or standard procedures for establishing a FOIA page. Some DOJ components appear to base their FOIA pages on a template. This is a simple strategy that other agencies should adopt. Not only would consistency among components make it easier for members of the public to find information, it could also make it easier for components to ensure that they are complying with the law without having to expend significant resources.

AGENCIES SHOULD ENSURE SMOOTH NAVIGATION BETWEEN MAIN AND COMPONENT FOIA SITES AND AMONG COMPONENTS

Each main agency FOIA Web page should contain clear links to its component FOIA Web pages with descriptions of the records that are held by that particular component. A good example of this is the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) FOIA Web page, which includes a list of all its components with a brief description of each and a link to each FOIA page. DOJ also provides as an appendix to its FOIA Guide a comprehensive list of components and a general description of their missions as well as links and contact information for filing requests. This approach provides the requester with the necessary guidance to determine which component may hold the records he or she is seeking; it also helps to direct the requester to the correct component's FOIA site or electronic reading room to look for available records.

Agencies can also use a portal scheme to connect the FOIA information made available by each of their components. NASA recently redesigned its main FOIA Web page to serve as a portal to all thirteen NASA centers, with direct links to each of the centers' FOIA resources. Users of this site can easily move among the different pages but always return directly to the central site if one page does not provide the information they are seeking. This scheme also facilitates oversight of each component by the NASA FOIA staff to ensure that their sites are accurate, up-to-date, and in compliance with the law.

ALL COMPONENTS SHOULD PROVIDE ADEQUATE GUIDANCE, OR AT LEAST ENSURE EASY AND CLEAR ACCESS TO AGENCY-WIDE GUIDANCE

If a component does rely on an agency-wide guide or handbook, there should be a direct link to the guide from the FOIA site with an explanation of the applicability of agency-wide guidance to the component. There should also be simple navigational tools for returning to the component site. Nonetheless, certain basic guidance-contact information and any component-specific requirements for filing FOIA requests-should be easily accessible on each component site without the need to return to the main site or search for this information.

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Notes

33. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 73% of the adult population is online, including 71% of baby-boomers (50-64), 63% of the rural residents, and 84% who have completed "some college." Pew Internet & American Life Project, Internet Penetration and Impact, 2006, http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Internet_Impact.pdf.

34. Department of Justice, Office of Information and Privacy, Web Site Watch: Locating and Maintaining Accurate Information on FOIA Home Pages, FOIA Update, Vol. XIX, No. 2, 1998.

35. For example, the Air Force maintains two FOIA Web sites. One of the sites is linked to from the Air Force homepage. (http://www.af.mil/foia.asp). This site contains almost no information of use to a potential FOIA requester. There is a second, "hidden" Air Force FOIA Web site (http://www.foia.af.mil/) that is not linked from the Air Force home page. Yet, this is the site that links on the DOD and other DOD component pages lead to. The hidden site contains some of the information required by the FOIA, but none of the required records. It is unclear which page is the official FOIA site. As per our methodology, our review looked only at the FOIA site linked from the Air Force homepage.

36. FOIA Update, Vol. XIX, No. 2 (1998). Some added such a link only recently. For example, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) admitted in its 2006 FOIA Improvement Plan that it did not have a FOIA link on its home page. A link was finally established by August 2006, ten years after the passage of E-FOIA and eight years after the issuance of the DOJ Guidance regarding agency FOIA sites.

37. A rollover menu (sometimes also referred to as a drop-down, pop-up or fly-out menu) is a dynamic HTML function that is hidden until the cursor is placed over a certain image or text on a Web site. In addition to concealing information, this type of menu poses a problem for people with disabilities. Users with impaired motor skills may not be able to maneuver the cursor at the right angles to keep the menu open and select the desired option. Rollover menus can also be incompatible with technologies that assist the visually impaired with viewing Web sites. Roger Hudson, "Navigation Accessibility 1: Menus and Links," Web Usability (Aug. 2004), http://www.usability.com.au/resources/menus-links.cfm.

The following agencies have hidden FOIA links inside rollover menus on their home pages: Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), Federal Maritime Commission (FMC), NRC, National Security Agency (NSA), Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Social Security Administration (SSA).

38. For example, the DOD FOIA site is a series of Web pages with extensive guidance, contact information, and hundreds of publicly available records. But the main site is disorganized and difficult to read; unrelated items are posted one after the other with no way to navigate through them. To find the electronic form to submit a FOIA request, as well as links to DOD components, a user must scroll through several screens of text. There is a note on the page that DOD will soon launch a new FOIA site. Hopefully the new version will be more user-friendly than the current site.

39. FOIA Update, Vol. XIX, No. 2, 1998.

40. The potential for overwhelming many users is clear on the Small Business Administration (SBA) site, for example, where several links open different pieces of guidance in varied formats. A link entitled "Introduction to FOIA" opens a short Microsoft Word document with a description of the statute; another link with the title "SBA Guide to Public Information" leads to an HTML page with some general descriptions of SBA documents and contact information for a FOIA officer; a third link, "General Information," opens a longer PDF document with detailed guidance for FOIA requesters.

41. "Judging Criteria," The Webby Awards, 2006, http://www.webbyawards.com/entrie/criteria.php.

42. See Interagency Committee on Government Information, Final Report: Recommended Policies and Guidelines for Federal Public Websites, June 9, 2004, http://www.firstgov.gov/webcontent/about/documents/icgi_report.htm.

43. One agency that makes effective use of static FOIA links is the Legal Services Corporation (LSC). On every LSC FOIA page, there are consistently placed links to: (1) an overview of the FOIA, (2) the LSC FOIA Handbook, (3) annual FOIA Reports, (4) the electronic reading room, (5) FOIA FAQs, (6) LSC Laws & Regulations, (7) LSC Federal Register Notices, and (8) the Board of Directors page. Links to the major (non-FOIA) sections of the LSC Web site appear at the top of each page as well. NARA and BBG also use static links on their FOIA sites to allow users to navigate easily among the various FOIA-related pages.

44. "Agencies of such size that they contain sub-agencies or major agency components that administer the FOIA on a decentralized basis and have their own Web sites may maintain multiple 'electronic reading rooms,' so long as they are linked together clearly and efficiently for Web site users." DOJ, FOIA Guide: FOIA Reading Rooms, 2004.

45. For example, several DOL and EPA components link back to the main agency FOIA Web page but do not make it clear that the user left the component page and returned to the main site (because all of the sites follow a similar format and are linked together without a transparent navigation scheme).

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