Both DOE and DOD have established offices; designated staff; and promulgated policies, manuals, and guides to provide a framework for the OUO and FOUO programs. However, based on our assessment of the policies governing both DOE’s and DOD’s programs, their policies to assure that unclassified but sensitive information is appropriately identified and marked lack sufficient clarity in important areas that could allow for inconsistencies and errors. DOE policy clearly identifies the office responsible for the OUO program and establishes a mechanism to mark the FOIA exemption used as the basis for the OUO designation on a document. However, our analysis of DOD’s FOUO policies shows that it is unclear which DOD office is responsible for the FOUO program, and whether personnel designating a document as FOUO should note the FOIA exemption used as the basis for the designation on the document. Also, both DOE’s and DOD’s policies are unclear regarding at what point a document should be marked as OUO or FOUO, and what would be an inappropriate use of the OUO or FOUO designation. In our view, this lack of clarity exists in both DOE and DOD because the agencies have put greater emphasis on managing classified information, which is more sensitive than OUO or FOUO information. DOE’s OUO program was created in 2003 and DOD’s FOUO program has been in existence since 1968. Both programs use the exemptions in FOIA for designating information in a document as OUO or FOUO. Table 1 outlines these exemptions. The Federal Managers Financial Improvement Act of 1982 states that agencies must establish internal administrative controls in accordance with the standards prescribed by the Comptroller General. The Comptroller General published such standards in Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government, which sets out management control standards for all aspects of an agency’s operation. These standards are intended to provide reasonable assurance of meeting agency objectives, and should be recognized as an integral part of each system that management uses to regulate and guide its operations. One of the standards of internal control—internal control activities—states that appropriate policies, procedures, techniques, and mechanisms should exist with respect to each of the agency’s activities and are an integral part of an agency’s planning, implementing, and reviewing. DOE’s Office of Security issued an order, a manual, and a guide in April 2003 to detail the requirements and responsibilities for DOE’s OUO program and to provide instructions for identifying, marking, and protecting OUO information. According to DOE officials, the agency issued the order, manual, and guide to provide guidance on how and when to identify information as OUO and eliminate various additional markings, such as Patent Caution or Business Sensitive, for which there was no law, regulation, or DOE directive to inform staff how such documents should be protected. The overall goal of the order was to establish a policy consistent with criteria established in FOIA. DOE’s order established the OUO program and laid out, in general terms, how sensitive information should be identified and marked, and who is responsible for doing so. The guide and the manual supplement the order. The guide provides more detailed information on the eight applicable FOIA exemptions to help staff decide whether exemption(s) may apply, which exemption(s) may apply, or both. The manual provides specific instructions for managing OUO information, such as mandatory procedures and processes for properly identifying and marking this information. For example, the employee marking a document is required to place on the front page of the document an OUO stamp that has a space for the employee to identify which FOIA exemption is believed to apply; the employee’s name and organization; the date; and, if applicable, any guidance the employee may have used in making this determination. According to one senior DOE official, requiring the employee to cite a reason why a document is designated as OUO is one of the purposes of the stamp, and one means by which DOE’s Office of Classification encourages practices consistent with the order, guide, and manual throughout DOE. Figure 1 shows the DOE OUO stamp. The current DOD regulations are unclear regarding which DOD office controls the FOUO program. Although responsibility for the FOUO program was shifted from the Director for Administration and Management to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence (now the Under Secretary of Defense, Intelligence) in October 1998, this shift is not reflected in current regulations. Guidance for DOD’s FOUO program continues to be included in regulations issued by both offices. As a result, there is currently a lack of clarity regarding which DOD office has primary responsibility for the FOUO program. According to a DOD official, this lack of clarity causes personnel who have FOUO questions to contact the wrong office. The direction provided in Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government states that an agency’s organizational structure should clearly define key areas of authority and responsibility. A DOD official said that they began coordination of a revised Information Security regulation covering the FOUO program at the end of January 2006. The new regulation will reflect the change in responsibilities and place greater emphasis on the management of the FOUO program. DOD currently has two regulations, issued by each of the offices described above, containing similar guidance that addresses how unclassified but sensitive information should be identified, marked, handled, and stored. Once information in a document has been identified as FOUO, it is to be marked For Official Use Only. However, unlike DOE, DOD has no departmentwide requirement to indicate which FOIA exemption may apply to the information, except when it has been determined to be releasable to a federal governmental entity outside of DOD. We found, however, that one of the Army’s subordinate commands does train its personnel to put an exemption on any documents that are marked as FOUO, but does not have this step as a requirement in any policy. In our view, if DOD were to require employees to take the extra step of marking the exemption that may be the reason for the FOUO designation at the time of document creation, it would help assure that the employee marking the document has at least considered the exemptions and made a thoughtful determination that the information fits within the framework of the FOUO designation. Including the FOIA exemption on the document at the time it is marked would also facilitate better agency oversight of the FOUO program since it would provide any reviewer/inspector with an indication of the basis for the marking. Both DOE’s and DOD’s policies are unclear at what point to actually affix the OUO or FOUO designation to a document. If a document is not marked at creation, but might contain information that is OUO or FOUO and should be handled as such, it creates a risk that the document could be mishandled. DOE policy is vague about the appropriate time to apply a marking. DOE officials in the Office of Classification stated that their policy does not provide specific guidance about at what point to mark a document because such decisions are highly situational. Instead, according to these officials, the DOE policy relies on the “good judgment” of DOE personnel in deciding the appropriate time to mark a document. Similarly, DOD’s current Information Security regulation addressing the FOUO program does not identify when a document should be marked. In contrast, DOD’s September 1998 FOIA regulation, in a chapter on FOUO, states that “the marking of records at the time of their creation provides notice of FOUO content and facilitates review when a record is requested under the FOIA.” In our view, a policy can provide flexibility to address highly situational circumstances and also provide specific guidance and examples of how to properly exercise this flexibility. In addition, we found both DOE’s and DOD’s OUO and FOUO programs lack clear language identifying examples of inappropriate use of OUO or FOUO markings. According to Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government, agencies should have sufficient internal controls in place to mitigate risk and assure that employees are aware of what behavior is acceptable and what is unacceptable. Without explicit language identifying inappropriate use of OUO or FOUO markings, DOE and DOD cannot be confident that their personnel will not use these markings to conceal mismanagement, inefficiencies, or administrative errors or to prevent embarrassment to themselves or their agency. Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government discusses the need for both training and continuous program monitoring as necessary components of a good internal control program. However, while both DOE and DOD offer training to staff on managing OUO and FOUO information, neither agency requires any training of its employees before they are allowed to identify and mark information as OUO or FOUO, although some staff will eventually take OUO or FOUO training as part of other mandatory training. In addition, neither agency has implemented an oversight program to determine the extent to which employees are complying with established policies and procedures. DOE and DOD officials told us that limited resources, and in the case of DOE, the newness of the program, have contributed to the lack of training requirements and oversight. While many DOE units offer training on DOE’s OUO policy, DOE does not have a departmentwide policy that requires OUO training before an employee is allowed to designate a document as OUO. As a result, some DOE employees may be identifying and marking documents for restriction from dissemination to the public or persons who do not need to know the information to perform their jobs and yet may not be fully informed as to when it is appropriate to do so.