When a FOIA request lands in an employee's inbox, mailbox, or voicemail instead of the agency's official FOIA portal, the employee's first duty is not to answer it. Under the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552, as amended by the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016, the receiving employee must route the request promptly to the agency's designated FOIA office without substantive response, without confirming or denying records exist, and without negotiating scope. The 20-working-day response clock starts when the proper FOIA component receives the request — not when the individual employee does — but unwarranted routing delays can still become "unusual circumstances" the agency must explain in its annual report to the Attorney General.
The word "directly" matters here. A requester who emails a program analyst, calls a field office switchboard, or hands a letter to a receptionist is still making a FOIA request if the communication reasonably describes records and asks for them. Courts have long held that no magic words are required. So the "directly from the requester" scenario is really about the gap between where the request lands and where the agency's FOIA process begins — and employee responsibilities exist precisely to close that gap without triggering the kinds of procedural defenses (bad faith, improper withholding, missed deadlines) that FOIA litigation punishes.
Duty One: Recognize a FOIA Request Without Magic Words
A FOIA request exists whenever a person reasonably describes records and asks for them, regardless of whether they cite the statute. The Department of Justice's Office of Information Policy (OIP) makes this clear in its guidance to agency employees: a request does not need to invoke "FOIA," quote 5 U.S.C. § 552, or use any particular form. An email saying "send me the emails between the director and Acme Corp from March" is a FOIA request even if it never uses the word.
That recognition duty is the front line. Employees who think a request must be "formal" often send a substantive reply — "we don't have that" or "that's confidential" — which then gets cited in litigation as an improper withholding or a failure to search. The OIP's 2019 guidance on FOIA request handling repeatedly warns that ad hoc responses from program staff create litigation risk because they bypass the tracking system the agency uses to meet its statutory clock.
Distinguish three things fast. A FOIA request is a demand for existing records. A question about agency policy is a routine inquiry answered by public affairs. A request for a document the agency already publishes is a public reading room matter under 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(2). Each has a different routing path.
One misconception worth correcting early: a request sent to a personal work email still counts. The employee's duty is to forward it to the FOIA office and, where policy requires, log it in the agency's FOIA tracking system with the date and time received. Deleting it, ignoring it, or replying informally is a policy violation, even if the employee believes the requester used the wrong channel.
Duty Two: Route to the FOIA Office With a Timestamp
Prompt routing is a policy duty and, sometimes, a legal one. Most agency FOIA regulations require employees to forward FOIA requests to the agency's FOIA Requester Service Center or designated FOIA officer "promptly" or within a specified number of business days. The Department of Justice's component-level FOIA regulations, for example, direct employees to forward requests to the component's FOIA office; many agencies' internal directives set a 1-to-3 business-day forwarding expectation. Check your agency's own FOIA regulation and internal handbook — the figure varies.
The forwarding message should carry the original request unaltered. Employees should not summarize, paraphrase, redact, or trim attachments. The date and time of original receipt matters because the agency's response clock is calculated from "receipt" by the proper FOIA component, and the agency's annual FOIA report to DOJ captures processing times. Back-dating a request to the date an employee received it, or losing that date when the request is emailed around, is a common audit finding.
Do not "reply all" to the requester with the forwarding message. Reply to the FOIA office only, then send the requester a separate acknowledgment if agency policy requires it. Copying the requester on an internal triage chain can waive deliberative-process protections and confuse the record of what the agency received and when.
If the request comes in by phone or in person, the responsible move is to capture the requester's name, contact information, and the substance of the request in writing. Many agencies have a Form 100-style intake memo or a Public Information Request Form. Read the request back to the requester, note the receipt date, and route the written summary to the FOIA office the same day.
Duty Three: Avoid Unauthorized Substantive Responses
Never tell the requester whether the records exist, whether they will be released, whether they are exempt, or how much they will cost. That is the FOIA office's call, made in coordination with counsel where needed. Individual employees who "helpfully" answer scope questions often create binding positions the agency must later defend or walk back. The DOJ's OIP training materials for agency FOIA professionals stress that commitment-making authority sits with the FOIA Officer or the Chief FOIA Officer, not with program staff.
"Just checking" is a trap. If an employee searches the files, finds a responsive document, and tells the requester "we have that but it's sensitive," the employee has effectively made a partial disclosure decision and may have created a written record of exemption reasoning that is itself disclosable. The safer path: confirm receipt, share the request with the FOIA office, and let the FOIA office issue the response letter.
If the requester is a member of the media, a Member of Congress, or a represented party in litigation, employee duties do not change under FOIA, but parallel obligations may apply. Congressional inquiries go through the agency's Office of Congressional Affairs. Subpoenas go to counsel. Press inquiries go to public affairs. Knowing the correct lane prevents crossed wires that later look like obstruction.
One practical safeguard: agencies commonly maintain a written "no substantive response" rule in their FOIA handbook. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) publishes its own FOIA regulations at 36 C.F.R. Part 1250; those regulations describe how requests are received and routed. Employees at any agency should read their own agency's version, because the exact wording varies and it is what an administrative review will cite.
Duty Four: Preserve Records Immediately and Do Not Delete
Once a request lands, records that may be responsive become subject to a preservation duty. Spoliation — destroying or altering potentially responsive records — can sink the agency's litigation position and, at some agencies, trigger disciplinary action against the employee. The duty attaches when litigation or a FOIA request is "reasonably anticipated," which in practice means the moment an employee sees a request describing records in their custody.
The mechanics matter more than the principle. Auto-deletion policies in email systems, chat retention rules, and "keep it under 90 days" housekeeping habits can all destroy responsive records. Employees should not assume IT backups cover them. If an agency uses a messaging platform with 30-day retention, that is a 30-day window on which the requester's records may evaporate before the FOIA office ever searches.
Preservation does not mean gathering. It means leaving the records in place, in their native systems, with metadata intact, and alerting the FOIA office to any records that are scheduled for routine destruction so a hold can be considered. Do not move files into a personal folder, do not annotate them with new comments, and do not "clean up" the email thread.
A frequent edge case: records on personal devices or personal accounts used for agency business. Federal records law under 44 U.S.C. Chapters 31 and 33 and NARA's guidance treats these as potentially federal records. Employees who receive a FOIA request touching agency business conducted on a personal account should preserve those records and notify both the FOIA office and the agency records officer. Deleting them is a records violation even before it becomes a litigation problem.
Duty Five: Search Your Own Files Thoroughly but Do Not Search Others'
The program employee is the best witness to where the responsive records live — shared drives, tickler folders, team chats, contractor repositories, physical file rooms, and personal work email. The FOIA office often depends on that knowledge to define the search. Employees should be ready to identify the systems they used when the request describes their work.
Searching is not deciding. The employee searches and describes what was found; the FOIA office applies exemptions under 5 U.S.C. § 552(b) and consults counsel where needed. That division of labor is the standard in the DOJ's 2019 FOIA Self-Assessment Toolkit, which repeatedly cautions that ad hoc exemption calls by program staff undermine consistent agency practice.
Do not search outside the scope of the request and do not volunteer records that were not asked for. Overproduction creates privacy problems for third parties, unnecessary redaction work, and possible waiver arguments. If the search surfaces records that clearly answer a broader request the agency is already handling, tell the FOIA office — do not send them directly to the requester.
Document the search while it is fresh: which systems, which search terms, which custodians, which date ranges, and the outcome. That contemporaneous record becomes part of the litigation declaration if the release is challenged. The DOJ's OIP advises agencies to keep search declarations specific and non-conclusory — exactly the kind of detail a busy program employee can supply at search time and rarely reconstructs months later.
Duty Six: Flag Third-Party and Sensitive Information Early
FOIA exemptions under 5 U.S.C. § 552(b) protect categories that run through program records: personal privacy (Exemption 6 and, for law enforcement, 7(C)), confidential commercial information (Exemption 4), law enforcement techniques (7(E)), and classified information (Exemption 1). Employees are the first to recognize that a responsive document contains, say, a vendor's pricing formula or a named confidential informant, and that early flag saves the agency time and the third party a preventable disclosure.
Exemption 4 is worth naming because it is procedure-heavy. Under the Trade Secrets Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1905, and DOJ's FOIA guidance on "confidential" commercial information after the Supreme Court's 2019 decision in Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media, agencies often must give submitters an opportunity to object before releasing. That submitter-notice process takes time. Employees who flag the commercial content early let the FOIA office start the notice clock before the response deadline, rather than after.
Personal privacy flagging has a distinct failure mode. An employee who redacts names before sending the file to the FOIA office can destroy the record of what was originally there. Send the unredacted document to the FOIA office through an approved secure channel and note the privacy concerns in the cover message. Let the FOIA office do the redaction under the exemption.
Third-party consultation time can count against the agency's clock. If the agency needs to consult with a submitter or another agency, it typically must notify the requester and, in many cases, toll the response clock while the consultation is pending. That tolling only works if the employee flags the issue early enough for the FOIA office to issue the notice inside the initial 20-working-day window.
Duty Seven: Understand the 20-Working-Day Clock and Its First-Cut Math
The default response deadline is 20 working days after the agency receives a "perfected" request — one that reasonably describes records and meets the agency's published procedural requirements. That number comes straight from 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(A)(i), and it is the anchor for everything the FOIA office does after triage. The 20 days exclude Saturdays, Sundays, and federal legal public holidays.
A simple arithmetic check helps. If a request arrives on a Monday, 20 working days later is roughly four calendar weeks, adjusted for federal holidays. If two federal holidays fall inside that window — say, Thanksgiving and Christmas — the requester may see a response nearly five calendar weeks later, and that is still timely. Employees who tell a requester "we'll get back to you in two weeks" are promising something the statute does not require and the agency may not be able to meet.
The clock is not always the initial 20. The agency may take a 10-working-day extension in "unusual circumstances" — the need to search for and collect records from field offices or other facilities, the need to examine a voluminous amount of records, or the need to consult with another agency. The extension requires written notice to the requester under 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(B). Employee-caused routing delays that force such an extension are a policy problem worth avoiding.
Routing to the FOIA office is not itself a tolling event under the statute, but it can still count against "unusual circumstances" if the delay is unreasonable. Agencies document receipt dates carefully because DOJ's annual FOIA report — published each year by OIP — aggregates processing times, and a pattern of slow internal routing is a metric that shows up in oversight reviews by the Government Accountability Office.
Duty Eight: Handle Fees, Expediting, and Referrals Without Promising
Fees, fee waivers, expedited processing, and referrals to other agencies are all FOIA office matters, but employees often receive these questions first. The employee's role is to relay the questions, not to answer them. A commitment by a program employee to waive fees or grant expedited processing can be enforced against the agency, and it can also violate the agency's own fee schedule if the FOIA officer never approved it.
Expedited processing has a statutory standard. A requester is entitled to expedited processing if they demonstrate a "compelling need" — imminent threat to life or physical safety, or, for a requester primarily engaged in disseminating information, an urgency to inform the public about an actual or alleged federal government activity. Agencies may also grant expedition for other reasons at their discretion under 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(E). Employees should not weigh in on which category applies.
Referrals happen when the responsive records belong to another agency. If a program employee recognizes that some records in scope are actually held by a sister agency, note that in the forwarding message. The FOIA office decides whether to refer, consult, or coordinate. Employees who route records straight to another agency without going through the FOIA office can create a record-keeping gap that later makes it impossible to reconstruct what was sent, when, and under what authority.
Fee category also drives cost. A commercial-use requester pays search, review, and duplication; a news-media requester pays duplication only (and gets the first 100 pages free at most agencies); an "other" requester pays search and duplication with two free hours of search. These categories come from 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(A) and each agency's fee schedule regulation. Employees do not set them, but knowing them helps answer a requester's "why does it cost that much" question accurately — by pointing to the FOIA office.
Duty Nine: Document, Escalate, and Close the Loop
Documenting the receipt, routing, search, and any flags is the last duty and the one most likely to be skipped under deadline pressure. The contemporaneous record defends the agency in litigation, satisfies the agency's internal FOIA audit controls, and helps the FOIA officer meet the annual reporting requirement under 5 U.S.C. § 552(e). A short routing memo with date, time, channel, and any preservation concern is enough in most cases.
Escalation is a duty, not an option. If the requester is a known litigant, a journalist on deadline, a Member of Congress, or someone who has already filed a FOIA lawsuit, escalate immediately. If the responsive records are subject to a litigation hold, escalate. If the request implicates Congressional oversight, Inspector General investigations, or classified information, escalate. Each of these scenarios has an agency-specific protocol that kicks in above the employee's pay grade.
Close the loop with the FOIA office if the search turns up nothing. A "no records" finding is still a response the FOIA office must communicate in writing. If the employee simply says nothing to the FOIA office because nothing was found, the requester may be left waiting for a response that never comes. Silence is the failure case that turns into a constructive denial and, in some cases, a lawsuit.
One habit worth institutionalizing: calendar a personal reminder on the third working day after routing. If the FOIA office has not acknowledged receipt by then, forward again. If it still has not acknowledged by the fifth working day, notify the FOIA Officer directly. The 20-day clock is the agency's, but a lost request is everyone's problem.
FAQ
What counts as a FOIA request if the employee didn't see the word "FOIA"?
A request counts if it reasonably describes records and asks for them, regardless of whether it cites the statute. DOJ's Office of Information Policy guidance to agencies makes clear no magic words are required. An email saying "send me the March contracts with Acme" is a FOIA request even without any statutory citation.
Can an employee answer a simple FOIA request directly to save time?
No. Substantive responses, including "no records" answers and fee quotes, must come from the FOIA office through the agency's formal response letter. Program employees who answer informally create litigation risk and may be seen as making unauthorized disclosure decisions. The correct move is to route and acknowledge receipt only.
Does the 20-day clock start when the employee opens the email or when the FOIA office logs the request?
The clock starts when the agency's proper FOIA component receives a perfected request. That is usually the FOIA office, not the individual employee's inbox. But unreasonable routing delays can be treated as "unusual circumstances" the agency must explain, so prompt forwarding still matters.
What happens if an employee accidentally deletes a responsive email?
Preservation failures can lead to spoliation findings in litigation, and they can violate federal records law under 44 U.S.C. Chapters 31 and 33. The employee should immediately notify the FOIA office and the agency records officer. IT backups may or may not recover the record — that is an agency-specific fact the employee cannot verify alone.
Are texts and chats subject to FOIA?
Yes, if they are agency records. Messages on agency-issued devices and work-related messages on personal accounts can both be responsive. Retention rules vary by platform, and some chat tools auto-delete in 30 days or less, which makes early flagging to the FOIA office urgent.
What if the requester is a journalist on deadline?
The employee's routing duty does not change, but the FOIA office may consider expedition under the "compelling need" standard in 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(E). Do not promise expedited processing. Route the request, flag the deadline context, and let the FOIA officer make the call.
Do state public records laws work the same way?
No. State open records laws vary widely, and each has its own receiving office, clock, and routing rules. A request that crosses both federal and state records should be routed to the relevant federal FOIA office and the state records officer separately. Do not assume the federal rules transfer.
What should an employee do if the requester shows up in person?
Capture the request in writing, read it back to confirm scope, note the receipt date and time, and route it to the FOIA office the same day. Do not answer substantive questions in the meeting. Escalate if the person indicates they are represented by counsel or have already filed suit.
This article is general educational information about FOIA procedures and is not a legal opinion. Agency-specific FOIA regulations, internal directives, and records schedules control in any individual case, and the exact routing and preservation rules vary by agency and jurisdiction. Consult your agency's FOIA officer, records officer, or qualified counsel before making a disclosure, withholding, or preservation decision. If a request implicates imminent safety concerns or an active emergency, contact appropriate agency and local emergency services.