The Department of Justice has recently issued this guidance on the provision of the FOIA Amendments of 2007 (officially called the OPEN Government Act of 2007, Pub. L. No. 110-175, 121 Stat. 2524). Section 9 of the Act provides that agency records “maintained for an agency by an entity under Government contract, for the purposes of records management,” remain subject to the FOIA. This was inserted so that agencies that contract out records management responsibilities can't say that because the records aren't in the daily physical control of the government, they aren't subject to the FOIA (don't laugh, agencies would definitely try this).
The DOJ guidance is fairly straightforward. It basically says when you are performing your searches make sure you check for any possible records held by contractors. While I'm not sure why it took nine months from the passage of the law to issue the guidance, I am happy that it came out. I for one hope to see more guidance on other issues to come out in the future.
Thank you for sharing the news.Record management is very important for a orfanization, whether it is small or big one.To maintain the old files are very critical. In some time most of the time spent in searching the relevant information, for performing the task.
Posted by: records management | January 27, 2011 at 01:43 PM