FOIA Gen
Your requests
In FOIA Gen, choose Requests. Every request in the project is listed with its agency, its status, its next deadline, its tracking number and when it last changed. A dot marks a request with a reply you haven't opened.
Watch the video
Deadlines and Follow-ups2:45 videoThe tiles at the top filter the list:
| Needs you | Something is waiting on you: a draft to finish, a fee estimate or a question from the agency, a deadline the agency missed (as soon as its date has passed), a request whose law only says "promptly" once ten business days have gone by with no answer, or an appeal window that is still open. When the agency is late, its status stays what the agency last made it; the request shows The agency missed a deadline with Point it out, or Time to check in with the agency with Ask for a status update. |
|---|---|
| Waiting on agency | Sent, and the agency's move; also a campaign's email copies waiting to go out. Campaigns |
| Overdue | A deadline has passed. |
| Closed | Released, no records, withdrawn, closed, or refused with no appeal left to make. |
| All | Everything. |
Search by title, agency or tracking number finds one request.
Inside a request
The top of a request shows its status, its tracking number and how it was sent, then the one thing to do next. Four tabs hold the rest:
| Overview | Deadlines, the request as it was sent, its details and notes. Change the status yourself here if something happens outside FOIA Gen, for example records arriving by post, or an agency writing from an address FOIA Gen can't confirm is theirs. Which messages can change a request |
|---|---|
| Messages | Everything sent and received, with a plain-English reading of each agency letter. |
| History | Every step, with a fingerprint of everything sent and received. A request's history |
| Documents | The records the agency released. Released documents |
Following up
On Overview, a follow-up drafts the email for you: Ask for a status update, Answer a question or clarify, Say you're still interested, Narrow it to cut fees and Point out a missed deadline. Read the draft, change it if you like, and send it. It goes from the request's own address, so the reply comes back to the request.
Appealing
When a request is refused, or only partly released, Draft the appeal writes one: who it goes to, each withheld part and the exemption the agency gave, and the date the appeal window closes. For a federal request it also tells you about free mediation from the Office of Government Information Services. Read it, change it and send it before the window closes.
Appeals often go somewhere other than the office that took the request, and many appeal offices don't take email. The appeal says where yours goes and how:
| By email | When the appeal office has an email address (from the law, or written in the agency's decision letter), Send emails it from the request's own address. |
|---|---|
| Through a portal | Open the portal, then Copy the subject and Copy the appeal into it. |
| By post | The appeal office's address is shown; Print or save as PDF, sign it and mail it. |
| No address on file | The agency's decision letter says where appeals go. Copy or print the appeal and send it that way. |
FOIA Gen never sends an appeal to the request's own address when the appeal office is a different one. After you submit a portal or posted appeal, enter the date (and any tracking or certified-mail number) and press I've sent the appeal: FOIA Gen keeps a copy of exactly what you sent, marks the request Appealed and closes the appeal window.
Keeping, withdrawing and deleting
Save as template keeps the request to reuse. Templates Delete draft removes a request that was never sent. A sent request can't be deleted; Withdraw marks it withdrawn (tell the agency too if you want them to stop work), and its history is kept.
Signed in to VeraGen? Press Guide me on any screen for a walkthrough, or ask Odin.