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Chief FOIA Officer Report of the Farm Credit Administration

Chief FOIA Officer and Senior Counsel: Jane M. Virga

The Farm Credit Administration (FCA or Agency) submits this report in response to the request 

by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Information Policy. This report has 

been prepared by Jane Virga, Chief FOIA Officer. 

The FCA is an independent agency in the executive branch of the U.S. Government. It is 

responsible for regulating and examining the banks, associations, and related entities of the Farm 

Credit System (System), including the Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation. The System 

is a nationwide network of borrower-owned financial institutions that provides credit to farmers, 

ranchers, and agricultural and rural utility cooperatives. Originally created in 1933 by an 

Executive order, the Agency derives its powers and authorities from the Farm Credit Act of 

1971, as amended. 

The FCA strives to have an exemplary Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) program, to process 

all FOIA requests within the statutory time frames, and to comply with all aspects of the FOIA. 

The FCA is a small Agency, with approximately 250 employees, and receives only a small 

number of FOIA requests (usually less than 50 requests per year). Although FCA has four small 

field offices, its headquarters in McLean, Virginia, retains most of the Agency’s records. Thus, 

FCA’s FOIA staff is able to conduct records searches quickly, efficiently, and on time. We have 

no backlog. 

The basic FOIA office is housed in the Office of General Counsel. The FOIA Officer processes 

all FOIA requests. FCA’s Director of the Office of Management Services, who is not a member 

of the Office of General Counsel, serves as the FOIA Appeals Officer. 

Section I: Steps Taken to Apply the Presumption of Openness

FOIA Training:

1. Did your FOIA professionals or the personnel at your agency who have FOIA responsibilities 

attend any FOIA training or conference during the reporting period such as that provided by the 

Department of Justice?

• Such training or events can include offerings from OIP, your own agency or another 

agency or organization.

Both the Chief FOIA Officer and the FOIA Officer attended FOIA training during the reporting 

period, which was provided by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the American Society of 

Access Professionals.

2. Provide an estimate of the percentage of your FOIA professionals and staff with FOIA 

responsibilities who attended substantive FOIA training during this reporting period.
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100% of the FOIA professionals and staff with FOIA responsibilities attended substantive FOIA 

training during this reporting period.

3. In the 2014 Chief FOIA Officer Report Guidelines, OIP asked agencies to provide a plan for 

ensuring that core, substantive FOIA training is offered to all agency FOIA professionals at 

least once each year. Please provide the status of your agency’s implementation of this plan.

• Include any successes or challenges your agency has seen in implementing your plan.

The FCA’s plan for attending core, substantive FOIA training has been fully successful. The plan 

was fully implemented as all FOIA professionals and staff attended training. There were no 

challenges.

Discretionary Releases:

4. Does your agency have a distinct process or system in place to review records for 

discretionary release?

• If so, please briefly describe this process.

• If your agency is decentralized, please specify whether all components of your agency 

have such a process or system in place?

Yes. The FCA uses a front loaded approach to discretionary release. That is, our first step is to 

analyze whether disclosure would likely cause harm to the Agency or would be prohibited by 

law. If not, then we stop there and make the release whether or not an exemption may have 

applied. We believe that this approach results in many discretionary releases of material that 

could have been withheld under one or more exemptions. In cases where we initially determine 

that release would likely cause harm to the Agency and also that an exemption would apply, we 

always revisit our initial determination regarding harm to the Agency. If we reverse our initial 

determination in this regard, determine that the likely harm is not significant enough to justify 

withholding, or if the likely harm is not the type of harm the exemption is intended to protect 

against, then we would make the discretionary release. The FOIA Officer seeks guidance, as 

appropriate, from senior staff during this review process.

5. During the reporting period, did your agency make any discretionary releases of information?

Yes. We believe the FCA made many discretionary releases of material otherwise exempt from 

disclosure, especially with respect to b2 and b5. However and for reasons discussed above, it is 

difficult to determine our exact number of discretionary releases because we do not make an official 

determination as to whether an exemption will apply if a release is not likely to cause harm to the 

Agency and is not prohibited by law. Instead, if it meets those two criteria, the release is made with 

no further analysis. Thus, there is likely to be additional releases that would have qualified for an 

exemption without determining whether an exemption applied. 
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6. What exemption(s) would have covered the material released as a matter of discretion? For a 

discussion of the exemptions that allow for discretionary releases, please see OIP’s guidance on 

implementing the President’s and Attorney General’s FOIA Memoranda. 

For example, in a case where an exemption almost certainly would have applied, Exemption b2 

would have covered the information that was released as a matter of discretion. But since we stop the 

analysis and simply release in cases where release is not likely to harm the Agency and is not 

prohibited by law, we have likely released material that would have been covered by other 

exemptions as well. 

7. Provide a narrative description, as well as some specific examples, of the types of information 

that your agency released as a matter of discretion during the reporting year. 

We apply the presumption of openness to all decisions involving the FOIA. The Chief FOIA 

Officer and FOIA Officer maintain constant contact to ensure that all appropriate discretionary 

disclosures are made. An example of where FCA released information that was almost certainly

covered by an exemption as a matter of discretion is as follows: despite the applicability of 

Exemption b2, we disclosed a number of internal personnel policies that were very trivial in 

nature, such as how FCA defines basic human resources terms, the flexiplace policy at FCA, 

FCA’s training policy applicable to its employees, and the like.

8. If your agency was not able to make any discretionary releases of information, please explain 

why.

Not applicable.

Other Initiatives:

9. If there are any other initiatives undertaken by your agency to ensure that the presumption of 

openness is being applied, please describe them here.

• If any of these initiatives are online, please provide links in your description.

Not applicable.

Section II: Steps Taken to Ensure that Your Agency

Has an Effective System in Place for Responding to Requests

Processing Procedures:

1. For Fiscal Year 2014, what was the average number of days your agency reported for 

adjudicating requests for expedited processing? Please see Section VIII.A. of your agency's 

Fiscal Year 2014 Annual FOIA Report.

• Please note here if your agency did not adjudicate any requests for expedited processing 

during Fiscal Year 2014.
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The Agency adjudicated requests for expedited processing in an average of 6.29 days.

2. If your agency's average number of days to adjudicate requests for expedited processing was 

above ten calendar days, please describe the steps your agency will take to ensure that requests 

for expedited processing are adjudicated within ten calendar days or less. 

Not applicable.

Requester Services:

3. Does your agency notify requesters of the mediation services offered by the Office of 

Government Information Services (OGIS) at the National Archives and Records Administration? 

See OIP Guidance, “Notifying Requesters of the Mediation Services Offered by OGIS." (July 9, 

2010) 

Only in appeal responses.

4. When assessing fees, does your agency provide a breakdown of how FOIA fees were 

calculated and assessed to the FOIA requester? For example, does your agency explain the 

amount of fees attributable to search, review, and duplication? See OIP Guidance, “The 

Importance of Good Communication with FOIA Requesters 2.0: Improving Both the Means and 

the Content of Requester Communications.” (Nov. 22, 2013)

In most instances, the Agency does not charge fees. However, we assessed fees of $100 in only 

one instance during the reporting period. In this case, we provided a detailed explanation 

regarding the amount of fees attributable to search, review, and duplication, as well as provided 

insights on the search and processing methodology that we used. We plan to continue this 

practice of outlining how fees are assessed.

5. If estimated fees estimates are particularly high, does your agency provide an explanation for 

the estimate to the requester? See id.

If estimated fees are high, the Agency explains the reason for the high amount of estimated fees

in advance. Additionally, we would work with the requester in an attempt to narrow the request 

and reduce fees.

Other Initiatives:

6. If there are any other steps your agency has undertaken to ensure that your FOIA system 

operates efficiently and effectively, such as conducting self-assessments to find greater 

efficiencies, improving search processes, eliminating redundancy, etc., please describe them 

here.

The FOIA staff continuously assesses our processes to ensure that our FOIA system operates 

efficiently effectively. For example, at the end of the fiscal year the FOIA Officer did an internal 
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control review, which looked at internal policies and procedures, receipt of requests, response 

time, and rate and success of appeals. The review concluded that the FOIA Office complied with 

the law and that there was an efficient and effective program.

Section III: Steps Taken to Increase Proactive Disclosures

Posting Material:

1. Does your agency have a distinct process or system in place to identify records for 

proactive disclosure? If so, please describe your agency’s process or system.

The FCA has a distinct process to identify records for proactive disclosure. The Office of 

Congressional and Public Affairs (OCPA) identifies such records. The Assistant Director for 

OCPA directs the posting of such records to the Agency’s website and consults with the FOIA 

staff as necessary.

2. Does your process or system involve any collaboration with agency staff outside the 

FOIA office? If so, describe this interaction.

In addition to collaborating with OCPA in this regard, FCA recently brought on an additional 

records officer. The FOIA office expects to collaborate with the new records officer to increase 

proactive disclosures.

3. Describe your agency’s process or system for identifying “frequently requested” records 

that should be posted online.

Due to the small number of FOIA requests each year, the FOIA Officer can easily determine if 

we have any frequently requested records. However, to date, we have not identified any 

frequently requested records.

4. Provide examples of material that your agency has proactively disclosed during the past 

reporting year, including links to the posted material.

During the past reporting year, we have proactively disclosed the following examples of material 

on our website in the area identified as “Recent Updates”:

• The Fall Regulatory Projects Plan, http://www.fca.gov/law/perf_plan.html;

• Recruiting Schedule for Spring 2015, 

http://www.fca.gov/about/careers/recruitingschedule.html;

• An Information Memorandum on Farm Credit System operating expenses, 

http://ww3.fca.gov/readingrm/infomemo/Lists/InformationMemorandums/Attachments/1

99/IM-Operating_Expenses_072214.pdf; and 

• Approved minutes of the April 10, 2014, Board meeting, 

http://www.fca.gov/Download/BoardMinutes/April2014BoardMinutes.pdf.
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5. If there are any other steps your agency has taken to increase proactive disclosures, please 

describe them here.

Not applicable.

Section IV: Steps Taken to Greater Utilize Technology

Online Tracking of FOIA Requests and Appeals:

Making Material Posted Online More Useful:

1. Beyond posting new material, is your agency taking steps to make the posted information 

more useful to the public, especially to the community of individuals who regularly access your 

agency’s website?

• Steps can include soliciting feedback on the content and presentation of posted material, 

improving search capabilities on your agency website, posting material in open formats, 

making information available through mobile applications, providing explanatory 

material, etc.

We have included a subscription list on our website that allows visitors to provide an email 

address to subscribe to updates from our website. We also provide an email address for the 

public to report problems with the subscription list and request assistance. For our Open 

Government Initiative we ask the public to tell us what we can do better. If the outlined resources 

fail to meet the information needs of a member of the public, we ask for feedback and ideas to 

improve participation and collaboration at FCA. We ask the public for input and to write to us at 

opengov@fca.gov.

2. If yes, please provide examples of such improvements.

• If your agency is already posting material in its most useful format, please describe these 

efforts.

One of the things we have done recently is integrate SharePoint into our external website. This 

has allowed us to effectuate updates faster as well as enhance the user’s experience when 

navigating our webpage. 

3. Has your agency encountered challenges that make it difficult to post records you otherwise 

would like to post?

No.

5. If so, please briefly explain what those challenges are. 

Not applicable.

Other Initiatives:
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5. Did your agency successfully post all four quarterly reports for Fiscal Year 2014?

• Please see OIP’s guidance for posting of quarterly reports to ensure that your agency is 

following all required steps (including using the correct file type and URL structure) so 

that your quarterly reports are properly appearing on FOIA.gov. (If your reports are 

posted to your website but not appearing of FOIA.gov, please contact OIP in order to 

resolve the issue.)

Yes.

6. If your agency did not successfully post all quarterly reports, with information appearing 

on FOIA.gov, please explain why and provide your agency’s plan for ensuring that such 

reporting is successful in Fiscal Year 2015.

Not applicable.

7. Do your agency's FOIA professionals use e-mail or other electronic means to 

communicate with requesters whenever feasible? See OIP Guidance, “The Importance of Good 

Communication with FOIA Requesters 2.0: Improving Both the Means and the Content of 

Requester Communications.” (Nov. 22, 2013) If yes, what are the different types of electronic 

means are utilized by your agency to communicate with requesters? 

Yes. The FCA uses e-mail to communicate with requesters whenever feasible.

8. If your agency does not communicate electronically with requesters as a default, are 

there any limitations or restrictions for the use of such means? If yes, does your agency inform 

requesters about such limitations? See id.

Not applicable.

Section V: Steps Taken to Improve Timeliness in Responding to Requests and Reducing 

Backlogs

Simple Track:

1. Does your agency utilize a separate track for simple requests?

No.

2. If so, for your agency overall in Fiscal Year 2014, was the average number of days to 

process simple requests twenty working days or fewer?

Not applicable. 

3. Please provide the percentage of requests processed by your agency in Fiscal Year 2014 

that were placed in your simple track.
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Not applicable. 

4. If your agency does not track simple requests separately, was the average number of days 

to process all non-expedited requests twenty working days or fewer?

Yes.

Backlogs:

BACKLOGGED REQUESTS

5. If your agency had a backlog of requests at the close of Fiscal Year 2014, did that backlog 

decrease as compared with the backlog reported at the end of Fiscal Year 2013?

• If not, explain why and describe the causes that contributed to your agency not being 

able reduce its backlog. When doing so, please also indicate if any of the following were 

contributing factors:

o An increase in the number of incoming requests

o A loss of staff

o An increase in the complexity of the requests received

Not applicable. The FCA did not have a backlog of requests at the close of Fiscal Year 2014.

6. If you had a request backlog please report the percentage of requests that make up the 

backlog out of the total number of requests received by your agency in Fiscal Year 2014. If your 

agency did not receive any requests in Fiscal Year 2014 and/or has no request backlog, please 

answer with "N/A."

• To calculate your agency’s percentage, you must divide the number of backlogged 

requests reported in Section XII.A. of your Fiscal Year 2014 Annual FOIA Report by the 

number of requests received in Fiscal Year 2014, which can be found in Section V.A. of 

your Annual FOIA Report. Once divided, you can multiply that number by 100 to get the 

percentage.

Not applicable.

BACKLOGGED APPEALS

7. If your agency had a backlog of appeals at the close of Fiscal Year 2014, did that backlog 

decrease as compared with the backlog reported at the end of Fiscal Year 2013?

• If not, explain why and describe the causes that contributed to your agency not being 

able reduce backlog. When doing so, please also indicate if any of the following were 

contributing factors:

o An increase in the number of incoming appeal

o A loss of staff

o An increase in the complexity of the appeals received
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Not applicable. The FCA did not have a backlog of appeals at the close of Fiscal Year 2014.

8. If you had an appeal backlog please report the percentage of appeals that make up the 

backlog out of the total number of appeals received by your agency in Fiscal Year 2014. If your 

agency did not receive any appeals in Fiscal Year 2014 and/or has no appeal backlog, please 

answer with "N/A."

• To calculate your agency’s percentage, you must divide the number of backlogged 

appeals reported in Section XII.A. of your Fiscal Year 2014 Annual FOIA Report by the 

number of appeals received in Fiscal Year 2014, which can be found in Section VI.A. of 

your Annual FOIA Report. Once divided, you can multiply that number by 100 to get the 

percentage.

Not applicable.

Status of Ten Oldest Requests, Appeals, and Consultations:

TEN OLDEST REQUESTS

9. In Fiscal Year 2014, did your agency close the ten oldest requests that were reported 

pending in your Fiscal Year 2013 Annual FOIA Report?

Yes, we had one pending request at the end of Fiscal Year 2013, which we closed at the 

beginning of Fiscal Year 2014 within the 20 day response period.

10. If no, please provide the number of these requests your agency was able to close by the end 

of the fiscal year, as listed in Section VII.E of your Fiscal Year 2013 Annual FOIA Report. If you 

had less than ten total oldest requests to close, please indicate that. 

• For example, if you only had seven requests listed as part of your "ten oldest" in Section 

VII.E. and you closed six of them, you should note that you closed six out of seven 

“oldest” requests. 

Not applicable.

10. Of the requests your agency was able to close from your ten oldest, please indicate how 

many of these were closed because the request was withdrawn by the requester. If any were 

closed because the request was withdrawn, did you provide any interim responses prior to the 

withdrawal?

None.

TEN OLDEST APPEALS

11. In Fiscal Year 2014, did your agency close the ten oldest appeals that were reported 

pending in your Fiscal Year 2013 Annual FOIA Report?
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Not applicable. The FCA did not have any pending appeals.

13. If no, please provide the number of these appeals your agency was able to close by the end of 

the fiscal year, as listed in Section VII.C.(5) of your Fiscal Year 2013 Annual FOIA Report. If 

you had less than ten total oldest appeals to close, please indicate that. 

• For example, if you only had seven appeals listed as part of your "ten oldest" in Section 

VII.C.(5) and you closed six of them, you should note that you closed six out of seven 

“oldest” appeals. 

Not applicable. The FCA did not have any pending appeals.

TEN OLDEST CONSULTATIONS

14. In Fiscal Year 2014, did your agency close the ten oldest consultations that were reported 

pending in your Fiscal Year 2013 Annual FOIA Report?

Not applicable. The FCA did not have any pending consultations.

15. If no, please provide the number of these consultations your agency was able to close by the 

end of the fiscal year, as listed in Section XII.C. of your Fiscal Year 2013 Annual FOIA Report. 

If you had less than ten total oldest consultations to close, please indicate that. 

• For example, if you only had seven consultations listed as part of your "ten oldest" in 

Section XII.C. and you closed six of them, you should note that you closed six out of seven 

“oldest” consultations. 

Not applicable. The FCA did not have any pending consultations.

Additional Information on Ten Oldest Requests, Appeals, and Consultations & Plans:

16. Briefly explain any obstacles your agency faced in closing its ten oldest requests, appeals, 

and consultations from Fiscal Year 2013.

Not applicable.

17. If your agency was unable to close any of its ten oldest requests because you were waiting to 

hear back from other agencies on consultations you sent, please provide the date the request was 

initially received by your agency, the date when your agency sent the consultation, and the date 

when you last contacted the agency where the consultation was pending.

Not applicable.

18. If your agency did not close its ten oldest pending requests, appeals, or consultations, please 

provide a plan describing how your agency intends to close those “ten oldest” requests, appeals, 

and consultations during Fiscal Year 2015.

Not applicable.
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Use of the FOIA’s Law Enforcement Exclusions

Did your agency invoke a statutory exclusion, 5 U.S.C. § 552(c)(1), (2), (3), during Fiscal Year 

2014?

If so, please provide the total number of times exclusions were invoked.

No.