How can I work with FOIA for a living?
June 2, 2017 4:23 PM Subscribe
I realize this might sound about as exciting as watching grass grow to some people, but the Freedom of Information Act and the request system around it has been fascinating to me for years. I've filed hundreds of requests, read probably over ten thousand pages of documents that have come from the requests, and devoted probably a solid year of my time to learning about FOIA. My question is what can I do that could be a career path that used the skills I've learned or else allow me to work with FOIA? I've looked into being a FOIA lawyer but for the most part these are incredibly rare jobs to get because there isn't much demand for them.
Consider looking at it from the other side of the telescope. What about those organizations who are required to answer FOIA requests?
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 4:30 PM on June 2
State Department. Document reviewer.
^But for the above I believe you need security clearance.
posted by tooloudinhere at 4:49 PM on June 2
What you want is a federal job with the 0306 job series code--a.k.a. FOIA professionals. Details on the job series are here. You can search by job series code on usajobs.gov, the main site for federal jobs.
posted by whitewall at 4:51 PM on June 2 [2 favorites]
If you work in any aspect of public policy, you'll probably be submitting FOIA requests very often. I work in regulatory policy for a nonprofit. FOIA is how we find out how federal policy translates into corporate activity. So, some law or regulation says companies engaged in X have to keep track of Y and report the information to a government agency every year in form Z? Odds are you're going to have to use FOIA to find out what conversations companies and agencies had about X, Y and Z.
Local government units and state government agencies mostly all have FOIA officers -- they range from secretaries to lawyers, depending on the agency and the complexity of its needs. Sometimes they're halftime HR or IT people, and halftime FOIA officers. Depending on your current job, you might be able to start networking with local governments who are looking for an accountant/HR person/IT guy/secretary/whatever you currently do and see if there's a possibility to take on a half-and-half role as Current Office Role + FOIA officer. You could definitely put on your resume your significant FOIA expertise.
Media organizations also often need people who are good at working the FOIA system; another direction would be to start networking with local media organizations, especially if you have any sort of research or reporting experience. Some may have in-house FOIA research experts, some may be willing to hire someone part-time.
But I think a direction to go that may be more fruitful for that would be to set up a FOIA consultancy, and offer your services to multiple stakeholders -- citizen's groups, reporters, gadflies, lawyers, etc. People could hire you to help them craft well-targeted FOIA requests and sort through what they're seeking. I would start by setting up a web presence and contacting community organizations whose work you believe in -- parents of public school children fighting for equity in funding? environmental orgs? citizen groups fighting rapacious developers? ad hoc bike infrastructure groups? -- and volunteer your services. After you've done a few and you have some people willing to vouch for you, you can start taking paying customers, who might be a reporter doing big research, or a plaintiff's lawyer suing a city. You could continue to volunteer your services to smaller and/or charitable groups. And develop and advertise presentations on FOIA -- the power of it, what's available, the process for appeals, how to craft good and targeted FOIAs -- and people will start hiring you. You may be able to register it as a continuing legal education program in your state, you may be able to get gigs at things like the state school board convention or the regional county government units organization, where all the local elected officials go and do education programs on things relating to their jobs. (For my local school board, there was a yearly statewide new board member training over a 3-day weekend, a yearly statewide convention over a 3-day weekend, and a monthly tri-county dinner/networking/education meeting where there would be an hour on school finance or FOIA or whatever -- there are a LOT of these all the time.) You could offer trainings to high school and college journalists, and their conventions. So many options!
Anyway, I think there's definitely space to start working on it as a volunteer project and develop it into a side-hustle, and turn that into a full-time job working for yourself as a FOIA consultant, or going "in house" with a newspaper or lawfirm or government agency when you're known as the expert in the region on FOIA.
as a PS, citizens' groups and charities quite frequently need help with data FOIAs where they receive a big file dump and don't know how to manipulate and sort what they receive to turn it into something that makes sense. That would be an ancillary service you could provide if you have those sorts of skills. Larger media organizations these days have data guys who can do those manipulations, but citizens' groups often know what they're after and can get the data, but aren't quite sure how to turn the data into something meaningful or extract what they need from the data.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:23 PM on June 2
Opposition research for your preferred political party or cause. My political organization files so many FOIAs we have a custom designed bit of software for tracking their status and results.
posted by fancypants at 5:55 PM on June 2
I am an FOIA officer in local government - I'll try to dig up a more detailed email I wrote about my job and forward it to you. I sort of have a background in reference librarianship, and paralegal would be useful.
I think lodging them and fulfilling them are somewhat different things. What do you like about it?
posted by jrobin276 at 6:40 PM on June 2 [1 favorite]
A few questions to help narrow the possibilities:
1) What have you *done* with your FOIA responses? Did you use them to advise people, to take an action, to write a story?
2) Have you ever appealed a FOIA decision? Litigated a FOIA suit? If you've done hundreds, the answer to both questions should probably be yes... do you have the time/energy/contrarianism to fight for documents that you're entitled to but are being withheld?
Some possibilities:
a) journalist. Hard profession nowadays, but documentheads/data types are in demand. See, for example, how Jason Leopold has carved out a niche for himself.
b) FOI officer. Apparently a couple in thread... they can tell you what it's like.
c) FOIA lawyer. There's a niche for on-spec FOIA litigation, as FOIA allows for fees if you "substantially prevail" in a suit, which is a fairly low bar. If you've done a suit pro se, you probably know what that's all about. If you haven't, you might consider doing one... nothing like getting engaged to see what it's like. (I learned more about FOIA by handling one lawsuit than I did in years of requesting/appealing.)
Echoing what some other people have asked... what appeals to you?
posted by cgs06 at 8:25 PM on June 2
I cringed slightly reading your post as you made it sound like this is a fun thing you do on a whim. If you show up at a place that gets FOIA'ed a lot and cheerfully announce you do it as a hobby, they'll probably kill you and hide your body in a dumpster. It's a HUGE amount of of work on the agency end, enormous. Awful. A complete PITA.
ototh, if you just phrased that poorly and you have experience crafting good FOIAs (not "everything you've got on cow diseases!") then I'd suggest one of two roles: an outreach type role at an agency working with groups that FOIA regularly to improve the process and/ or consulting with groups that FOIA irregularly to help them come up with something useable.
posted by fshgrl at 9:37 PM on June 2
Have you thought about librarianship?
posted by witchen at 10:04 PM on June 2
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