§ 2507.3 Definitions. As used in this part: *Agency* is any executive agency, military agency, government corporation, government-controlled corporation, or other establishment in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government, or any independent regulatory agency. AmeriCorps is an agency.
AmeriCorps or the Agency means the Corporation for National and Community Service, which operates as AmeriCorps.
*Complex request* is a request that typically seeks a high volume of material or requires additional steps to process, such as the need to search for records in multiple locations.
*Consultation* is when AmeriCorps locates a record that contains information of interest to another agency, and, before any final determination is made, AmeriCorps asks that other agency for its views on whether or not the records can be released to the requester.
*Exemptions* are the nine categories of information that are not required to be released in response to a FOIA request because release would be harmful to a government or private interest. These categories are called “exemptions” from disclosure.
*Expedited processing* is the FOIA response track granted in certain limited situations to process FOIA requests ahead of other pending requests.
*FOIA request* is a written request for Agency records, made by any person, including a member of the public (U.S. or foreign citizen), an organization, or a business—but not including a Federal agency, an agent of a foreign government, an order from a court, or a fugitive from the law—that either explicitly or implicitly involves the FOIA, or this part.
*Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)* is a United States Federal law at 5 U.S.C. 552 that grants the public access to records possessed by government agencies. Upon written request, U.S. Government agencies are required to release reasonably described records, except to the extent the records fall under an exclusion or one of the nine exemptions listed in the Act.
*Frequently requested records* are records that have been released either in full or with the same information withheld and either: ( 1 ) Have been requested from AmeriCorps three or more times; or
( 2 ) Because of their subject matter, AmeriCorps determines have become or are likely to become the subject of subsequent requests for the same records.
*Multitrack processing* is a system that divides incoming FOIA requests into processing tracks according to their complexity.
*Office of Government Information Services* (OGIS) is an office within the National Archives and Records Administration that offers mediation services to resolve disputes between FOIA requesters and agencies, as a non-exclusive alternative to litigation. OGIS also reviews agency FOIA compliance, policies, and procedures and makes recommendations for improvement.
*Proactive disclosures* are records that agencies make publicly available on their website without waiting for a specific FOIA request.
*Record* means information, regardless of the form in which it is stored or its characteristics, which is created or obtained by an agency and is under the control of the agency at the time of the request. It includes information maintained for the agency by an entity under government contract for records management purposes. It does not include records that do not already exist and that would have to be created specifically to respond to a request.
*Referral* occurs when an agency locates a record that originated with, or is of otherwise primary interest to, another agency. The receiving agency will forward that record to the other agency to process the record and to provide the final determination directly to the requester.
*Search* is the process of looking for and retrieving records or information responsive to a request.
*Simple request* is a FOIA request that an agency anticipates will involve a small volume of material or which the agency will be able to process relatively quickly.
*Tolling* means temporarily stopping the running of a time limit.