Pre-determination communications

Introduction
Agencies will frequently communicate with FOIA requesters before making a determination as to the substance of the request.

Acknowledgement
The first communication a requester is likely to receive after submitting a FOIA request is an acknowledgement of receipt from the agency. These acknowledgements, which are not a determination, often assign a tracking number and provide other administrative information.

Estimated date of completion

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Requests for information from the requester

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"Still interested" letters
Agencies will sometimes send communications to FOIA requesters to ask whether they are “still interested” in having their request processed. These letters indicate that if a response is not received within a certain number of days, the request will be administratively closed. The legal basis for "still interested" letters is unclear.

In July 2015, the Office of Information Policy at the Department of Justice issued guidance to agencies on "still interested" letters, recommending that they afford requesters no less than 30 working days to respond.

In April 2016 OGIS released an analysis of the practice with respect to FOIA requests submitted to Cabinet-level departments. It concluded that:
 * the number of FOIA requests Cabinet-level agencies reported closing using still interested letters accounted for less than 1 percent of all FOIA requests processed by those agencies in all but one of the last 17 fiscal years;
 * the number of requests agencies reported as closing using still interested letters does not appear to have a large effect on the number of requests the agency reported pending at the end of the fiscal year;
 * there is no guidance or standard for reporting requests that agencies close using still interested letters; for this reason, it is difficult to get a true picture of how often these letters are used; and
 * current reporting does not capture the full effect of the use of still interested letters on FOIA requesters.

Public liaisons and FOIA officers

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