FOIA Gen

How FOIA Gen keeps its information current

A request is only as good as the rules it was written to. FOIA Gen keeps the public records laws in its rules library and the directory of federal agencies current, and when a rule changes, the requests you already sent follow the change and you are told what moved.

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How FOIA Gen Keeps Its Rules Current3:59 video

The laws

FOIA Gen's rules library holds the public records law of the federal government, every state and the District of Columbia. Every rule on a Rules card carries its citation and a link to the official page it was read from: the statute itself, the pages its deadlines, fees and appeal rules come from, and the official list of holidays its business days skip.

Every day, FOIA Gen reads each of those official pages again, where the site allows automated reading, and compares its text with the text on file. Most official sites do; for a law whose pages can't be read automatically, the card doesn't show the daily check. Menus, page headers and footers, timestamps such as "last updated", and similar parts of a page that change without the law changing are ignored. A page whose text differs on every visit is only checked to see that it still answers.

When an official page changes, nothing in FOIA Gen changes by itself. VeraGen's FOIA Index team reads what changed. If the law changed, they update the rules, and Rules cards show the new rules from then on. If it didn't (a page was redesigned, or another section on it was amended), they record that the law is unchanged.

The federal directory

Federal agencies and their components come from FOIA.gov, the federal government's own FOIA directory, and FOIA Gen syncs with it every night: new contact details are applied, and a component that FOIA.gov no longer lists is taken out of the directory. A component that FOIA.gov lists again comes back.

When a law or holiday calendar changes

Every request still with an agency follows the change: sent, acknowledged, in progress, waiting on you, or at the appeal stage (denied, partly released, no records, appealed). A draft has no deadlines yet and uses the current rules when you send it. Closed, withdrawn and released requests are not changed.

FOIA Gen recounts each of the request's open deadlines with the new rules, the same way it counted them in the first place: from the day the request was sent, or the day the agency's letter arrived. A date the agency gave you itself, such as a reply-by date or an extension to a set date, doesn't change.
If a date moves, the deadline shows the new date and its basis, and the request's History gets one line from FOIA Gen. It names the law, says what changed and what it was before, lists each date that moved, and gives the rule set's version and citation. If a law shortened the agency's time from 10 to 8 business days, for example, the line reads: … changed (rule set version 3, …): the agency must now respond within 8 business days (was 10 business days). The agency's decision deadline moved from 19 Oct 2026 to 15 Oct 2026.
A paused clock (the agency waiting on your answer to a fee estimate or a question) stays paused. The History line says how many days it will have left when it restarts, and it restarts with those days when you reply.
When no date moves but the change concerns the request, you still get the History line: a change to the fees the agency may charge or to who may make a request, and, for a request at the appeal stage, a change to where an appeal goes.
The person who wrote the request is emailed about it, as their Email me setting on the Inbox says: right away, in the daily digest, or not at all. See Email alerts.

A change reaches open requests within a few minutes. A change that touches none of a request's dates and nothing it depends on, such as a clearer wording of a rule, adds nothing to its History.

Holiday calendars

Business-day deadlines skip weekends and the public holidays of the jurisdiction whose law applies.

Federal holidays	Set by law (5 U.S.C. 6103), so FOIA Gen works them out for every year, including the weekday a holiday is observed when it falls on a weekend. Inauguration Day isn't counted: it is a holiday only for federal offices in and around Washington, DC.
State holidays	Taken from each state's official calendar, a year at a time. VeraGen adds a state's next year when the state publishes it.

A deadline counted past the last year of a state's calendar says so under the deadline, for example Counted without Texas's 2028 holiday calendar, which isn't published yet: only weekends were skipped after 31 Dec 2027. Holidays in that stretch weren't skipped, so the real deadline may be a day or more later; check with the agency if it matters. When the state's next calendar is added, the deadline is recounted and the note goes. If the date moves, the request's History says so.

What you see on a Rules card

Official sources checked daily · last checked (a date)	Under Sources: the day FOIA Gen last read the official pages this law rests on. When several pages are involved, it's the oldest of those days, so a page that stopped answering shows. If one of the pages can't be read automatically (some sites refuse automated reading, and some build their text in the browser), the line isn't shown.
Checked against the statute on (a date)	The day the rules themselves were last checked by a person against the statute.
Synced from FOIA.gov on (a date)	On a federal agency's card: when its details were last brought in from FOIA.gov.
The official source for (a state's) law changed on (a date)	A notice at the top of the card when an official page changed more than a week ago and the check isn't finished. The rules shown are the ones on file until it is. A change younger than a week isn't shown, so a page that was only redesigned doesn't alarm anyone.

Something looks wrong?

Press Report outdated details on the Rules card and say what looks wrong. It goes to the FOIA Index team. Reading a Rules card

FOIA Gen explains the rules and links each one to its source. It isn't legal advice.

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