Proposal to improve FOIA stuck in bureaucracy.

• Position: FOIA - Freedom of Information Act

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Recommendations to improve how U.S. agencies handle Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests are awaiting approval at the Office of Management and Budget--and have been for almost a year, according to the director of the office that created them.

Miriam Nisbet, director of the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), told Nextgov that she doesn't know what is causing the delay. She said OGIS submitted the guidelines in February 2011. The government's budget crisis may have taken precedence, she speculated to Nextgov.

OGIS is responsible for mediating disputes between FOIA requesters and the agencies processing those requests and for recommending policy changes to Congress and the president for how FOIA processing can operate more efficiently and transparently, Nextgov said.

But the office, which was created in 2007 by the Open Government Act and opened within the National Archives and Records Administration in September 2009, has yet to see any recommendations to improve the government's FOIA processes come to fruition.

On the ombudsman side, Nextgov reports OGIS' seven-person office processed more than 750 cases during its first two...