New Portal Will Cut 10 Days From FOIA Process, Achives Says

A cloud-based portal to manage and track Freedom of Information Act requests and disputes should reduce the average FOIA case time at the National Archives and Records Administration from 25 to 15 days, the agency said in a memo posted Friday on the Cio.gov blog .

The new portal, which is also aimed at educating the public about the FOIA process, should knock out 10 percent to 15 percent of FOIA requests before they're made, the agency said.

The National Archives memo is part of a collection of information technology updates federal agencies have posted in the past few days to mark the six-month anniversary of Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra's 25-Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal IT.

The Defense Department is the only major government IT user that hasn't yet posted an update. Other posts Friday came from the Education Department, the National Science Foundation and the Small Business Administration.

Federal agencies aren't generally required to turn documents over to the National Archives until they are 30 years old or older, so most of the agency's FOIA requests are for historical rather than contemporary research. Most agency records held at the Archives that don't deal with national security are available for viewing without a FOIA request.