Freedom Of Information Act Requests Research Articles

What They Were Thinking: Communal Rationality, Strategic Action Fields, and the Launch Plan for Oxycontin

Purpose: Few studies in our field have investigated corporate communications at the origins of the United States opioid crisis, which arguably began around the mid-1990s. Such analyses can illuminate executives and managers' collective thinking at the time (that is, "communal rationality"), nuance our public narratives, and recommend ways that technical communicators can engage further with this public health tragedy. Thus, this article surfaces the communal rationality expressed in the launch plan for OxyContin, which I obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. This is perhaps the first close reading of a pharmaceutical launch plan in our scholarly literature. Method: Following precedent in other research, I applied a three-point heuristic based on the concept of strategic action fields: what is going on and what is at stake, what interpretive frames are constructed, and what the rules of the game are. Results: The communal rationality expressed in the launch plan involves a complex tangle of cultural knowledge, including state and national laws, guidelines, classes of analgesics, and industry practices. The writers effectively translate this knowledge into opportunities, positioning statements, strategies, and tactics. Conclusion: In some ways, the launch plan is an exemplary piece of technical and professional communication, but its treatment of ethics and risk is highly problematic—arguably making it an example of communication failure as well. Future research should delve deeper into the opioid crisis, exploring additional promotions, genres, drugs, and methodologies.

Private Information Acquisition via Freedom of Information Act Requests Made to the Securities and Exchange Commission

ABSTRACT There is limited evidence about when, why, and which individuals incur costs to acquire nonpublic information about a firm, largely due to the difficulty of observing private information acquisition. To overcome this difficulty, we obtain data on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). We predict and find that perceived information asymmetry between managers and outsiders resulting from both proprietary and agency costs triggers FOIA search. We categorize organizations making FOIA requests using their business descriptions and find that many, including law and intellectual property firms, are not expressly interested in obtaining information for near-term equity trading. Instead, their search activity relates to determinants beyond financial characteristics, including patent litigation and executive turnover. Taken together, we provide evidence on private information search by a relatively unexamined set of organizations and shed new light on the function of the SEC’s Office of FOIA Services. JEL Classifications: D82; D83; M41.

Book Reviews

Book Reviews

The Law: Government Transparency and Public Access

AbstractNational governments regularly balance concerns of transparency and access to information against the need for information security and confidentiality. Increased government transparency can inform the public of the reasons underlying government decisions and can promote the participation of outside parties and actors. However, increased transparency can uncover wrongdoing that can lead to embarrassment or legal action against government actors. This project explores the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and analyzes how politicization affects aggregate federal executive branch transparency. Utilizing FOIA initial disposition data across the Bush II and Obama administrations, I find a complex relationship between politicization, as indicated by aggregate appointee presence within an agency, and FOIA requests outcomes. I find that increased politicization is associated with a higher proportion of responses, noting that agencies were not able to locate responsive FOIA records. However, I find less evidence that politicization affects the aggregate amount of information released to requesters from retrieved records.

Designing Engagement in Local News: Using FOIA Requests to Create Inclusive Participatory Journalism Practices

ABSTRACT This study explores how an engaged journalism process supported by participatory design practices can impact attitudes and perceptions of audience engagement in local journalism. Using MuckRock’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) submission tool, journalists, journalism students, and community stakeholders engaged in participatory design workshops centered around pressing local issues and creative approaches to filing FOIA requests. This study re-imagines FOI requests not just as a way to locate source material for important local reporting, but as a visible process that invites the public to engage and understand how that reporting is done — and how anyone can use and benefit from the process. Findings show that design-driven engagement journalism practices can make public records culture more inclusive, engaging, and accessible, and support more collaborative and creative engagement between journalists and audiences.

Does the Freedom of Information Act Foil the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Intent to Keep Investigations Confidential?

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has a long-standing policy to keep formal investigations confidential. In this study, we examine the extent to which compliance with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) provides investors with information about ongoing SEC investigations. We exploit a unique empirical setting whereby the SEC denies FOIA requests because of ongoing enforcement proceedings (hereafter, exemption denials). We find that exemption denials predict a substantial number of ongoing and future SEC investigations. Exemption denials are also associated with significant negative future abnormal returns, which is consistent with exemption denials providing a noisy public signal that allows certain sophisticated investors to earn future abnormal returns. Overall, our findings suggest that information transparency laws such as FOIA have the potential to limit the SEC’s ability to maintain effective and confidential investigations. This paper was accepted by Brian Bushee, accounting.

Do political donors have greater access to government officials? Evidence from a FOIA field experiment with US municipalities

Whether political donors have greater access to government officials is a perennial question in politics. Using a freedom of information act (FOIA) compliance field experiment with US municipalities in California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania, we fail to find evidence that political donors have greater access to government officials compared to engaged citizens. We contribute to the lobbying literature by testing for preferential treatment towards political donors in municipal government. Consistent with the extant FOIA literature, we do find that a formal FOIA request increases compliance rates and decreases wait time before an initial reply. This is an important contribution because, although many polities have FOIA laws, it cannot be taken for granted that FOIA laws will lead to transparency in practice. Testing the effectiveness of FOIA laws in the US is particularly important because state laws vary substantially.

The Death Knell That Wasn't: Public Access to Federal Contractor Employment Data After Argus Leader Media

Federal government contractors collect hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars annually and employ roughly a quarter of the U.S. workforce. They also provide important public goods and government services. But what, exactly, does the public have a “right to know” about federal contractors, and how can it access this information? These two questions are especially important in the context of employment law. Most federal contractors are bound by an executive order that prohibits them from discrimination in employment and requires them to submit employment-related data to the federal agency responsible for monitoring compliance and enforcing the law. For decades, this data has been subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by civil rights attorneys, the media, and other interested members of the public. However, contractors opposing the release of their employment data have argued that it is shielded from public disclosure by FOIA’s Exemption 4, which protects confidential commercial or financial information submitted to the government by private persons. In this Article, I explain the conflicting effects of the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 (FIA), a bipartisan effort to increase government transparency, and Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media, a 2019 Supreme Court decision that overturned the disclosure-friendly test agencies applied to determine whether Exemption 4 covered information requested under FOIA. In the wake of Argus, some legal commentators were quick to claim that the erasure of the test sounded the death knell for FOIA requests for private information, including federal contractor employment data. I argue that the fallout from Argus is not inevitable. Rather, by undermining case law suggesting agencies do not have discretion to release information covered by Exemption 4, Argus tacitly restores such discretion. Thus, agencies must apply a standard codified in the FIA to covered information. Ironically, applying the FIA’s standard to covered information has the same effect as applying the preArgus test that agencies used to determine whether Exemption 4 covered the information. While Argus does not discuss the FIA because the FOIA request at issue was filed in 2011 and the FIA is not retroactive, the decision changes how agencies should interpret and apply the FIA’s disclosure-friendly standard in Exemption 4 cases.

Strategic Syndication: Is Bad News Shared in Loan Syndicates?

We investigate whether lead arrangers opportunistically withhold their private information from participant lenders and how this behavior affects the structure of loan syndicates. Using an FDA inspection database assembled through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, we show that lead arrangers hold less of a loan when the borrower experiences a bad inspection outcome prior to its issuance. This effect is stronger when lead arrangers are more likely to be informed, as measured by higher inspection materiality and lead arrangers submitting FOIA requests to the FDA prior to a loan’s issuance. Furthermore, the influence of inspection outcomes is mitigated through both voluntary disclosure by the borrower and mandatory disclosure imposed by the Open Government Initiative. Overall, our results provide robust evidence that lead arrangers exploit their informational advantage at the expense of the participant lenders.

Systematic overview of Freedom of Information Act requests to the Department of Health and Human Services from 2008 to 2017

BackgroundThe Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) provides access to unreleased government records that can be used to enhance the transparency and integrity of biomedical research. We characterized FOIA requests to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies, including request outcomes, processing times, backlogs, and costs.MethodsUsing HHS FOIA annual reports, we extracted data on the number of FOIA requests received and processed by HHS agencies between 2008 and 2017, as well as request outcomes. Processing times were reported in three time increments, < 1–20, 21–60, or 61+ days, and trends in backlog status were also described. Information about costs and fees collected were aggregated.ResultsBetween 2008 and 2017, 69.6% of 530,094 HHS FOIA requests were received by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), 18.9% by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and 11.6% by all other HHS agencies. During this period, CMS processed 374,728 requests, FDA 114,938, and other HHS agencies 61,890. CMS and FDA reduced backlogged requests by 9396 (89.7%) and 4289 (65.3%), respectively, leaving backlogs of 1081 and 2279 requests at the end of 2017. CMS fully or partially granted 60.3% of requests whereas FDA fully or partially granted 72.4%. Of all requests to CMS, 82.0% were considered simple and 18.0% complex; 82.2% of simple requests and 54.9% of complex requests were processed in 20 days, and 5.6% and 29.9% were processed in 61+ days. In contrast, 60.2% of requests to FDA were considered simple and 39.8% complex; 28.8% of simple requests and 9.0% of complex requests were processed in 20 days, and 58.3% and 81.5% were processed in 61+ days. The costs to HHS associated with FOIA requests totaled $446.4 million ($809 per processed request), increasing from $28.1 million ($423 per request) in 2008 to $53.3 million ($1544 per request) in 2017. In total, HHS collected $8.5 million in fees (1.9% of total costs).ConclusionsFOIA is frequently used to obtain information about HHS and its agencies. With growing costs, minimal fees collected, and lengthy processing times, HHS agencies’ FOIA programs might be made more efficient through greater proactive record disclosure.

Motor vehicle towing: An analysis of injuries in a high-risk yet understudied industry

Objectives: National fatality rates for commercial tow truck operators exceed those of other first responders who also perform traffic incident management services. The objectives of the current study are to (1) characterize causal factors associated with injuries among commercial tow truck operators engaged in roadside assistance through analysis of coded and free text data obtained from U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigation files, and (2) utilize supplemental data sources to analyze environmental factors for injuries in which commercial tow truck operators were struck by roadway traffic. Methods: Searches of OSHA’s online IMIS database were performed to identify investigations of incidents in which tow truck operators were injured while performing roadside assistance duties. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests were submitted to obtain full investigation files for each case. Coded and narrative text analyses were performed to identify causal themes across the identified cases. Results: One-hundred and six cases of tow truck operators being killed or severely injured were identified in IMIS; 41 FOIA requests for related investigation documents were fulfilled. Two major event type themes were identified which accounted for 9 in 10 of the cases identified. These were (1) ‘struck-by’ incidents, which were primarily injuries resulting from contact with roadway traffic, rolling vehicles and equipment or other non-motorized objects; and (2) ‘caught-in or -between’ incidents, which were primarily injuries resulting from being pinned beneath and between vehicles and being caught in moving parts. Conclusions: The towing industry should provide initial and refresher safety training on vehicle loading and unloading, defensive techniques when exposed to traffic on roadways, and proper wheel chocking and braking procedures. States should include tow trucks as a first responder vehicle type in their “Move Over” laws and implement public awareness campaigns to protect all first responders, including tow truck operators.

The CIA's Democratic Integrity: Information Sharing and Electoral Accountability

Drawing from previous research on the political business cycle and principal-agent theory on executive and congressional oversight of information sharing, I analyze the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) implementation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) during presidential and congressional elections. I find that when the the incumbent president is democrat the CIA responds to FOIA requests approximately a month faster than when the incumbent president is a republican (p<0.20).

Public Meets Private: Conversations Between Coca-Cola and the CDC.

Policy Points There is growing understanding of how manufacturers of harmful products influence health policy. The strategies, approaches, and influences from such manufacturers that are detrimental to health have been termed the “corporate” or “commercial” determinants of health. However, while partnerships with the tobacco industry are clearly unacceptable for public health organizations, ties to other industries continue to be pursued.Such partnerships may influence health organizations in a number of ways detrimental to population health. However, with the exception of tobacco industry tactics as revealed by internal documents, we know relatively little about how this influence operates.This article uses emails between the Coca‐Cola Company and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which we obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, to explore the nature of corporate influence, conflicts of interest, and lobbying “in their own words,” and highlights the need for greater transparency and clearer policies on engaging with such industries. ContextThere is a continuing debate about the appropriateness of contacts between manufacturers of some harmful products and health researchers, as well as practitioners and policymakers. Some argue that such contacts may be a means of exerting undue influence, while others present them as an opportunity to pursue shared health goals. This article examines interactions between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Coca‐Cola Company (Coca‐Cola) as revealed by communications obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.MethodsWe sent 10 US FOIA requests in 2016/2017 for communications between employees at the CDC and Coca‐Cola. We then performed a thematic content analysis of the documents provided.FindingsOf our 10 FOIA requests, 3 requests are still pending (at the time of this publication); 5 were rejected as too broad or because no records were found; and 3 returned 295 pages from 86 emails. The CDC withheld 102 pages to “protect commercial or financial information which is privileged or confidential.” The returned emails demonstrate three main themes in Coca‐Cola's contact with CDC employees: to gain and expand access, to lobby, and to shift attention and blame away from sugar‐sweetened beverages.ConclusionsThe emails we obtained using FOIA requests reveal efforts by Coca‐Cola to lobby the CDC to advance corporate objectives rather than health, including to influence the World Health Organization. Our findings provide a rare example of the ways in which corporate interests attempt to influence public health practitioners “in their own words,” and they demonstrate a need for clearer policies on avoiding partnerships with manufacturers of harmful products.

The black box within a black box: Solitary confinement practices in a subset of U.S. immigrant detention facilities

In September 2013, the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued a directive regarding the use of solitary confinement for ICE detainees. Among other provisions, the directive mandated reporting on the rationale behind decisions to place a detainee into solitary confinement, with particular emphases on placements lasting more than 14 days and for reasons related to illness and other “special vulnerabilities.” This paper analyzes administrative data from ICE, gathered via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, on the use of solitary confinement per the 2013 ICE directive. The FOIA request covers 1193 incidents of solitary confinement from the beginning of the directive (September 2013) through the date of the FOIA request (September 2016), across six facilities under the jurisdiction of two California Field Offices (Los Angeles and San Francisco). Results reveal significant differences in the use of solitary confinement by gender, mental illness status, whether the confined individual had an attorney, Field Office jurisdiction, and individual facility. In addition, we document the extensive use of solitary confinement for “protective custody” and show that this category is potentially punitive in nature. Given the limited nature of access to information on ICE detainees, this is one of the only analyses of solitary confinement in immigrant detention facilities in the United States.

Researching the President’s [Redacted

Presidential libraries hold a bounty of archival records, which is why National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) responses to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests constitute a vital data source. However, standard protocols impose an inferential dilemma: researchers get the released sample without much information about the broader population, making it impossible to appraise the former relative to the latter. Drawing on a large FOIA request (and successful appeal) from the George W. Bush Presidential Library, this study affords such a test. Results show NARA archivists typically withheld outwardly unimportant records—e.g., weekends, holidays, and other uneventful days—though “response set” may have occasionally affected their redact-or-withhold decisions. After demonstrating how even seemingly innocuous omissions can bias estimates of presidential behavior, the study concludes with practical advice for researchers submitting FOIA requests to presidential libraries.

Complaints against health-care professionals providing police custodial and forensic medical/health-care services and sexual offence examiner services in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Complaints management is an integral component of good clinical governance and an essential contributor to patient safety. Little is known about complaints against health-care professionals (HCPs) in police custodial settings and sexual assault referral centres. This study explored the frequency with which complaints are made against such HCPs working in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It explored the nature of those complaints and the procedures by which they are investigated. Relevant information was requested from all police services in England, Wales and Northern Ireland; professional regulatory bodies; and the Independent Police Complaints Commission under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Eighty-nine per cent of police services responded to the FOIA request. However, only a minority of these provided detailed information. Many police services cited the provision of health-care services by external providers as the reason for not holding information upon complaints. There was no evidence of any upward trend in the numbers of complaints over the study period. Delayed response to a request for attendance, incivility, medication issues and issues regarding the quality of reports and evidence were amongst the most common types of complaints described. A small number of responders provided copies of the disciplinary procedures used to manage complaints against HCPs. Significant heterogeneity exists in respect of complaints handling procedures across custodial and forensic medical/health-care services and sexual offence examiner services. An opportunity to identify learning for improvement is being missed as a result of the absence of standardised complaints handling procedures.

Mobilizing Doubt: The Legal Mobilization of Climate Denialist Groups

Conservatives have adopted effective legal mobilization strategies in pursuit of their policy goals, but their legal mobilization efforts in the area of climate change politics are understudied. This paper explores the legal mobilization tactics of climate denialist groups, such as the industry-backed American Tradition Institute and the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic. These groups are increasingly using Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to establish evidence of organized political activity by public university researchers who study the dynamics of climate change. This manuscript adds to the legal mobilization literature in three ways. First, this paper traces the origin of these climate denialist groups to the broader conservative legal movement of the 1970s that sought to challenge the dominance of legal liberalism in law schools, public interest groups, the judiciary, and other elite-dominated institutions, such as universities. Second, this manuscript uses the high profile case of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s and the American Tradition Institute’s FOIA campaign against climate researcher Michael Mann to demonstrate how the legal mobilization tactics of climate denialist groups caused the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF) to successfully countermobilize with their own legal campaign in support of the First Amendment rights of faculty. Finally, this manuscript provides the first empirical evidence of the effect of climate denialist FOIA suits on the activities of university researchers. Through personal interviews with researchers who have been asked to produce information under a FOIA request or state equivalent, I find overwhelming evidence that these requests do not alter the ways that they communicate research findings via email, but that they report initial negative experiences after learning of these requests and their means of communication are altered in the aftermath of these requests.

How business lobby networks shaped the U.S. Freedom of Information Act: An examination of 60 years of congressional testimony

The news media and public interest groups pushed hard for the passage of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 1966. Since then, however, a majority of FOIA requests have been filed by business representatives or their lawyers, a phenomenon also observed in other countries that have adopted similar legislation. Although myriad policy networks helped shape the present-day U.S. law, this article focuses on the congressional testimony of business interests in the years leading up to the adoption of the FOIA and the following 50years, as the legislation reaches its half-century anniversary. The authors undertook this research because business interests are the largest requester group under the FOIA. Their influence has been noted in a small strand of literature, largely related to the courts, in steering the degree to which the public has access to information. This study found that business interests, particularly from the 1980s on, played a key role in shaping the FOIA by decreasing access to government-held information. This is a critical finding, given that the FOIA was adopted to promote the democratic norm of governmental accountability.

The Freedom of Information Act and the Race Toward Information Acquisition

We document a little-known source of information exploited by sophisticated institutional investors: the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a law that allows for the disclosure of previously unreleased information by the U.S. Government. Through FOIA requests, we identify several sophisticated institutional investors, chiefly hedge funds, that request information from the FDA. We explore the type of information commonly requested by funds and the types of firms that are targets of FDA-FOIA requests and show that FOIA requests allow these investors to generate abnormal returns. Thus, we illustrate a detailed mechanism through which costly information becomes incorporated into market prices. Received April 15, 2015; editorial decision April 16, 2016 by Editor Itay Goldstein.

The Freedom of Information Act and the Race Towards Information Acquisition

We document a little-known source of information exploited by sophisticated institutional investors: the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a law that allows for the disclosure of previously unreleased information by the U.S. Government. Through FOIA requests, we identify several sophisticated institutional investors, chiefly hedge funds, that request information from the FDA. We explore the type of information commonly requested by funds and the types of firms that are targets of FDA-FOIA requests and show that FOIA requests allow these investors to generate abnormal returns. Thus, we illustrate a detailed mechanism through which costly information becomes incorporated into market prices.