“Agency Freedom of Information Act professionals, like much of the federal workforce, have spent much of this year rethinking the way they do their jobs under mandatory telework.”
“The Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy, back in May, encouraged agency FOIA offices to seek out IT workarounds to keep running, ‘even at a diminished pace,’ during the pandemic.”
“Six months after that memo, Michael Sarich, FOIA director for the Veterans Health Administration, said the agency had an ‘incredible year’ and cut its case backlog by more than half. The goal of processing 600 cases in its backlog, he said, helped unify staff around a goal during a challenging time for the federal workforce.”
“’FOIA programs are going to be fine if our people are fine. So we take care of our people first, and then we focus on the mission,’ Sarich said Oct. 28 at a virtual conference hosted by AINS, a vendor that provides FOIA request tracking and management software. ”
“Sarich serves as the co-chair of the tech committee of the Chief FOIA Officers Council, which recently created several working groups to address some of the challenges and opportunities of emerging technology.”
“While the pandemic and mandatory telework have made some aspects of the job challenging — such as retrieving and opening mail at the office — Sarich said agencies with systems in place that allowed employees to telework had the easiest transition during the pandemic…”
“Ben Tingo, the chief compliance officer and general counsel of AINS, said agencies that adopted software-as-a-service FOIA case management solutions before the pandemic were in a better position to allow remote access and telework, and during the pandemic were ‘in a much better position than those that did not make the move to the cloud…’” Read the full article here.
Source: VHA cuts FOIA backlog in half, thanks to telework infrastructure – By Jory Heckman, November 10, 2020. Federal News Network.
