FEDERAL MEDIATION AND CONCILIATION SERVICE 

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT 

WASHINGTON, DC 20427 

Office of the General Counsel 

2012 Chief FOIA Officer Report to the Department of Justice 

Pursuant to the Attorney General’s FOIA Guidelines 

Overview 

 The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) is a small, independent Agency 

composed of 235 employees. Commensurate with its size, the FMCS received a mere 89 FOIA 

requests during the time frame covered by this report (March 1, 2011 to date), and processed 87 

of these requests to conclusion, all of which were closed within 20 business days. Only one of 

these requests was denied in its entirety, while the response to 7 requests had information 

redacted. No cases were backlogged as of the end of the reporting period, nor were any appeals 

received during this period. 

 The FMCS has a FOIA Officer and a Chief FOIA Officer, but no other formal FOIA 

structure. Under these circumstances, the vast majority of the Attorney General’s FOIA 

Guidelines either are not applicable to an agency of this size or have been implemented 

previously. 

I. Steps Taken to Apply the Presumption of Openness 

The Chief FOIA Officer personally responds to approximately 40% of the FOIA requests 

and confers with the FOIA Officer on some additional 20% of the FOIA cases. Hence, on the 

basis of personal knowledge, the Chief FOIA Officer can attest to the fact that FMCS’s FOIA 

activities are conducted with a presumption of openness. This presumption of openness was 

reinforced by the October 13, 2011, attendance of the FOIA Officer and Chief FOIA Officer at 

DOJ’s Refresher Training on the Guidelines for Preparation of Annual FOIA Reports, and the 

attendance of the Chief FOIA Officer at the review of the Guidelines for 2012 Chief FOIA 

Officer Reports. 

FMCS has not had occasion to make discretionary releases of otherwise exempt 

information. However, were such a potential opportunity to present itself, the Agency would 

utilize a balancing test to determine whether or not to make a discretionary disclosure. 

Specifically, FMCS would balance the benefit to the requester and the public of releasing the 

information against the harm of making the disclosure in the specific factual context of the 

individual case. 

FMCS has also furthered the interest of openness by frequently compiling data for 

requesters, rather than supplying them with raw data, in order to provide them with information 

in the most useful form. For instance, one requester sought work stoppage data for thirteen 
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selected states over a ten year period. FMCS could have directed the requester to the Agency’s 

website, where this information could have been extracted with great difficulty from monthly 

reports of all struck employers listed alphabetically rather than state by state. Instead, with its 

electronic capabilities, the Agency prepared and produced a file listing struck employers year by 

year on a state by state basis limited to the thirteen states of interest. See also, Spotlight on 

Success, infra, 

In addition, in order to maximize its responsiveness, FMCS attempts to direct requesters 

to an alternative source of information when it lacks information responsive to the request. 

Thus, in a case where the requester sought documents from what appeared to be a corporate cash 

distribution arbitration (rather than a labor or employment arbitration), FMCS suggested the 

requester contact FINRA, which operates the largest monetary and business disputes resolution 

forum in the securities industry, and provided FINRA’s arbitration website. 

 FMCS’s pattern of full and partial disclosures has been consistent from FY 2010 to FY 

2011, when considered in the context of the number of cases processed each year. In FY 2010, 

the Agency processed a total of 141 requests, of which 68 were full grants, one was a partial 

grant and none were full denials. Similarly, of 111 requests processed in FY 2011, 53 were full 

grants, 8 were partial denials and there were no full denials.

 

II. Steps Taken to Ensure that This Agency has an Effective System in Place for 

Responding to Requests 

 Since the FMCS is a small agency, the number of FOIA requests it processes are limited 

as shown above and, because they are centrally processed, the Agency does not require complex 

systems to operate effectively and efficiently. The same FOIA Officer processes all FOIA 

requests. The Chief FOIA Officer prepares, reviews and/or determines the appropriate response 

in over one-half the cases. The FMCS uses a variety of systems to ensure efficiency and 

effectiveness including, for example, dedicated electronic filing, log in/out, and request tracking. 

Three IT personnel have been specially designated to provide information support: one is 

dedicated to website posting, another to technical support and a third to records retrieval. 

III. Steps Taken to Increase Proactive Disclosures 

 Since the close of FY 2004, the FMCS has made major additions to the information 

available to the public in its “reading room” located on the Agency’s website. This includes 

frequently sought data concerning, among other things, notices of contract termination, 

arbitration data, and beginning and ending work stoppages reports. This data is updated on a 

monthly basis. These new categories of reading room postings, which were completed prior to 

FY 2012, have resulted in a year to year reduction of Agency FOIA requests of more than 

80% since FY 2004. In addition, in order to improve the delivery of FOIA services, the FMCS 

also added a voluntary customer feedback survey form to its reading room prior to FY 2012. 

However, no additional categories of information were identified during the reporting period 

which, if added to the reading room, would have further reduced FOIA requests to the Agency. 
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IV. Steps Taken to Greater Utilize Technology 

The FMCS has had the capability to receive and process all requests electronically on a 

centralized basis since 2009. The Agency uses a dedicated email address, which is available on 

the Agency’ website, to receive electronic requests. The FMCS has the capacity to track all 

requests electronically and uses off-the-shelf email management, word processing and spread 

sheet systems to process requests. The Agency also utilizes its Case and Contact Management 

System, originally developed to track mediation cases, to perform document search and retrieval. 

In addition, the Agency is developing a separate document system for sharing, storing and 

searching for its documents. However, given its record of prompt responses to FOIA requests, 

FMCS has not seen the need for implementing a requester tracking system. 

V. Steps Taken to Improve Timeliness in Responding to Requests and Reduce 

Backlogs 

1. FMCS utilizes a separate track for simple requests. On average the Agency processed 

simple requests in 7 days. 

2. FMCS had no requests and no appeals, backlogged or pending, as of the close of FY 

2010 and FY 2011. 

3. There was no reduction in the backlog of requests or appeals because there was no 

backlog in either category to begin with. 

4. FMCS’s goal is to process and respond to requests as quickly as possible. Its average 

processing time of 7 days for simple requests, no responses older than 20 days and the 

absence of a request or appeal backlog for either FYs 2010 or 2011, are a testament to 

the successful attainment of this goal. In as much as the Agency has not incurred any 

backlogs as of the close of FYs 2010 or 2011, it has not taken any additional steps to 

“reduce backlogs and improve timeliness.” 

5. FMCS has not has occasion to engage in a consultation process with another agency. 

Use of FOIA’s Law Enforcement “Exclusions” 

 FMCS did not invoke any law enforcement exclusion in any of its FOIA responses during 

FY 2011. 

Spotlight on Success 

FMCS has been particularly successful in its administration of cases involving complex 

requests for records of collective bargaining agreements, which records the parties are required 

to submit to the Agency by law 60-90 days prior to contract expiration. These records are 

organized and updated on a monthly basis and are available on the FMCS website. A requester 

seeking information regarding a specific agreement would have to review some 200-250 or more 

entries per month to locate this data; if the requester did not know the month in which the data 

was filed, it might have to review, for example, 12 months of entries or a total of some 3000 total 

entries to find the single record of group of records of interest. 
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While FOIA requires the production of data by an agency under appropriate 

circumstances, it does not require an agency to manipulate data to put it in a format deemed most 

useful by the requester. Nevertheless, on numerous occasions, FMCS has extracted information 

from collective bargaining records available on its website, manipulated that data electronically 

and printed it on a spreadsheet for the requester in a format most responsive to the requester’s 

inquiry. FMCS believes this approach is consistent with the “spirit of cooperation” sought by 

President Obama and exemplifies the type of “proactive disclosure” whose importance was 

stressed by Attorney General Holder. 

For example, one requester sought data identifying (1) contracts due to expire during the 

most recent 12 month period in North Dakota, and (2) all contracts expiring during a 5 year 

period in Iowa and South Dakota. An on-line search would have required the requester to review 

about 3000 entries to identify (1) [one year of North Dakota contracts] and some 12,500 entries 

to identify (2) [Iowa and South Dakota contracts over a 5 year period]. Instead of imposing this 

burden on the requester, FMCS electronically extracted the data sought, printed it on a 

spreadsheet and produced it for the requester. The Agency followed a similar approach in 

several other data intensive cases. 

Michael J. Bartlett 

Chief FOIA Officer 

Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service 

March 7, 2012