National Institutes of Health Slow Walks 633 FOIA Requests -- During a Pandemic

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) slow walked hundreds of FOIA requests. The lawsuits are mounting too.

Currently, NIH has 768 pending requests, 633 of those requests are backlogged requests. There are 33 lawsuits demanding to jump ahead of all requesters.

The agency says they are under-staffed.

The influx of requests and unavailability of custodians in response to the pandemic has overwhelmed the NIH FOIA Office. NIH says they are currently working to respond to numerous other FOIA requests, including cases with court-ordered deadlines, and are working with limited resources.

“Additionally, because of the unavailability of custodians to assist with the review process, the sheer number of FOIA requests and litigation NIH is working on, and the need to consult with multiple agencies in the review process, NIH is unable to process potentially responsive records at a rate greater than 300 pages per month," stated a NIH spokesperson.

The agency claims that processing potentially responsive records at a rate greater than 300 pages per month would cripple NIH’s ability to meet agreed-upon and court-imposed deadlines in other FOIA litigation cases and to continue responding to new and pending requests.

That’s probably the same reason the FDA recently said it would take 55-years to process a FOIA asking for the background on the COVID-19 vaccine approvals!

So for the trillions of dollars in COVID aid spent by Congress to bailout everyone, someone forgot to give the necessary resources so the people and the press could hold NIH and other federal agencies accountable. 

The #WasteOfTheDay is presented by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.