Air Force Slow to Process

The Air Force failed to keep track of requests for government records under the Freedom of Information Act, three years after a federal court found a pattern of not processing FOIA requests, according to an agency audit released to the National Security Archive.

The archive, a nongovernmental institute that makes available federal documents through FOIA, posted the audit on Thursday.

The Air Force is supposed to post frequently requested records online but did not create an agencywide system for identifying such records, stated the June 3 report prepared by the Air Force Audit Agency.

"As a result, the records were not readily available to the public," noted the audit, which was conducted from Oct. 2008 through Feb. 2009. The archive in 2005 filed a suit alleging that the Air Force lost, failed to process and discouraged the public from pursuing FOIA requests.

Due to improper automated tracking of requests, "the Air Force overstated the number of requests received and understated response times in the Air Force's annual FOIA report submission to the [Defense Department] for inclusion in their annual FOIA report to Congress," the report stated.