2024 Chief FOIA Officer Report HHS

Introduction

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS or Department1) is the United States government’s principal agency for protecting the health and wellbeing of all Americans and providing essential human services, especially for those who are least able to help themselves. The Department fulfills that mission, and, in doing so, serves Americans at every stage of life by implementing policies, and providing services and supports, that foster sound, sustained advances in the sciences underlying medicine, public health, and social services. Ten Operating Divisions (OpDivs), and one Staff Division (StaffDiv) administer the HHS Freedom of information Act (FOIA) program on a decentralized basis. 

The Freedom of Information Act2(FOIA) program within HHS contributes to the Department’s ability to successfully execute our mission and realize our strategic goals. I am pleased to submit the 2024 Chief FOIA Officer Report to the Attorney General of the United States, which summarizes the Department’s initiatives to comply with the Act and facilitate disclosure of government records while enhancing departmental operations.

HHS is proud of our continued FOIA accomplishments during the 2024 reporting period.  We continue to maintain and reinforce the Department’s commitment to the fair and responsible implementation of the Act.

We look forward to continuing to identify and implement additional best practices in our FOIA operations and demonstrate the Department’s ongoing commitment to the spirit of FOIA and the government’s transparency and open government goals.

Jeffrey A. Nesbit
Agency Chief FOIA Officer
Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs
Department of Health and Human Services

FOIA at the Department of Health and Human Services

The HHS FOIA enterprise consists of 11 FOIA Requester Service Centers (RSCs)/FOIA Offices – all of which receive and respond to FOIA requests.

The RSCs include the Administration for Children and Families (ACF); Administration for Community Living (ACL); Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS); Food and Drug Administration (FDA); Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA); Indian Health Service (IHS); National Institutes of Health (NIH); Office of Inspector General (OIG); the Office of the Secretary (OS); and Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

The Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs (ASPA) serves concurrently as the Agency Chief FOIA Officer (ACFO). The ASPA FOIA Division is a subcomponent of the Office of the Secretary and is referred to hereafter as “OS FOIA.”

OS FOIA processes initial FOIA requests for records in the custody of the Office of the Secretary (OS) StaffDivs, including the Program Support Center (PSC), the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH), the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and FOIA appeals on behalf of the PSC, ACF, ACL, OIG and the following Public Health Service agencies – AHRQ, ASPR, OASH, CDC, HRSA, IHS, NIH and SAMHSA. The OIG is the only OS StaffDiv that operates an independent FOIA office.

OS FOIA provides services under the supervision of the ACFO, responding to requests and appeals while establishing Departmental FOIA policies and monitoring FOIA implementation throughout the Department.  The ACFO ensures the HHS Secretary and the U.S. Attorney General are appropriately informed of the Department’s implementation of and compliance with FOIA.

The following HHS OpDivs and StaffDivs provided information in response to the FOIA compliance and transparency sections of this report:

Operating Divisions

  • Administration for Children and Families (ACF)
  • Administration for Community Living (ACL)
  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
  • Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)
  • Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
  • Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)
  • Indian Health Service (IHS)
  • National Institutes of Health (NIH)
  • Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)

Staff Divisions

  • Office of Inspector General (OIG)
  • Office of the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs (ASPA)

This Department is consistently amongst the top 5 Federal agencies by volume of requests received and processed annually.

During Fiscal Year (FY) 2023, HHS received a total of 46,350 FOIA requests, a 21% increase from the previous fiscal year.  The number of FOIA requests submitted to each of the HHS OpDivs varied widely, ranging from a low of 140 (ACL) to a high of 28,579 (CMS). Though the workload increased significantly, we are proud the Department also closed 47,038 FOIA requests in FY 2023, a 26% increase over the number of requests closed in the previous fiscal year, reducing the overall backlog by approximately 1% in the process.

Currently, 327 HHS employees work full-time on FOIA administration and approximately 70 additional employees provide part-time assistance. This is an increase of 43 equivalent full-time employees (FTEs) over FY 2022 staffing levels. 

As the average age of federal workers rises and increasingly larger numbers of federal employees are eligible for retirement, the Department is preparing for the impact of this demographic trend on the HHS FOIA community through planning to maintain the necessary alignment of critical skills in the agency workforce, so that we may continue to serve the requester community in the best manner possible.

Footnotes

1  In this report, “HHS” or “Department” means the entire agency, including all operating divisions and offices.

2  5 U.S.C. §552

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