These Federal Officers Wield the Power of Transparency

About this episode

The episode explores the intricacies of the Freedom of Information Act and the challenges faced by federal employees in managing public records requests.

Ask the US government for public records, and your request will go to a federal employee who holds the keys to what gets released and what doesn’t. Jason and Matt get a rare look inside a government Freedom of Information Act operation from Michael Sarich, who worked his way up from a FOIA post at the Bureau of Land Management to FOIA director at the Department of Veterans Affairs. In this episode, they discuss weird requests, big backlogs and the latest challenges to government transparency. For early and ad-free access to this episode on Apple, subscribe at  www.bloomberg.com/subscriptions/podcasts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

People in this episode

Hosts: Jason, Matt

Guest: Michael Sarich

Topics covered

• Freedom of Information Act
• government transparency
• public records
• FOIA operations
• government challenges

Keywords

• FOIA
• transparency
• government
• public records
• requests
• backlogs
• challenges

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Bureau of Land Management, Department of Veterans Affairs

Places: US

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