Office of Information Practices

 The State Office of Information Practices (OIP) has posted on its Log Reports page at oip.hawaii.gov two new reports of the State and county agencies’ UIPA Record Request Year-End Logs for FY 2023, which show many similarities between the overall results for the State and counties. 

 Consistent with data going back to 2015, the overwhelming majority of requesters continue to pay no fees or costs:  90.4% of 2,135 State requesters and 86.2% of 2,391 county requesters paid no fees or costs for requests completed in FY 2023.  Only 1.8% of State requesters and 3.9% of county requesters paid more than $50 for their record requests, and no one paid $1,000 or more for requests completed in FY 2023.  As in years past, it appears that most fees and costs are being paid by attorneys, businesses, special interest groups, media and other entities, and not by individual requesters, for either State or county record requests.   

 Of the 2,253 UIPA record requests received by the State agencies in FY 2023, 78% were typical requests, 16% were personal requests, and 6% were complex requests.  In comparison, the county agencies received a total of 2,839 requests, of which 81% were typical requests, 10% were personal requests, and 9% were complex requests.  State agencies completed 94.8% and county agencies completed 97% of the total requests they received in FY 2023. 

 Complex record requests continue to take a disproportionate share of both State and county resources while contributing less than their fair share to payment of fees and costs.  On average, State agencies spent 40.21 search, review and segregation (SRS) hours for each complex record request versus 1.33 hours for a typical request.  County agencies spent an average of 3.62 SRS hours on a complex record request versus 1.13 hours for a typical request.  Although 115 complex record requests constituted 5% of all State requests, they consumed more than thirty times as many SRS hours on average compared to typical requests and accounted for 73% ($98,655) of the gross fees and costs incurred by State agencies ($134,412), of which only 0.5% ($542) was ultimately paid by requesters in complex State cases.  Similarly, the 254 complex requests constituting 9% of the counties’ total requests consumed more than three times as many SRS hours on average compared to typical requests, and accounted for 27% ($16,821) of the total gross fees and costs incurred by all counties ($62,013), of which 12% ($7,347) was actually paid by requesters in complex county cases.  It took an average of 22.7 days for State and 20.6 days for county agencies to complete complex record requests, in contrast to the less than 9 days it took to complete the typical State or county request.   

 As to how requests were resolved, what follows is a summary compiled from Chart 4 of the FY 2022 and 2023 annual Log reports for the State and counties, which are posted on OIP’s UIPA Record Request Log Reports page that can be accessed by clicking on “OIP Reports” at oip.hawaii.gov. 

                                                           Comparison between State and County Log Reports 

                                                          FY22                 FY23                      FY22                         FY23
How Resolved                                State                 State                      Counties                  Counties

Granted in full                          54%                        55%                       58%                                 60%
Partially granted/denied        12%                        15%                       13%                                 12%
Denied in full                              8%                         6%                         4%                                 11%
Agency unable to respond      11%                       21%                       21%                                 12%
Requester withdrew                  1%                          1%                         1%                                   1%
Requester abandoned/             4%                         3%                        4%                                   5%
failed to pay

 OIP would like to thank all agencies who timely submitted their FY 2023 Year-End Log Reports and Checklists upon which OIP’s reports were based.  Agencies’ Log reports are important sources of objective data that can be analyzed over the years and provide facts that can counter unsupported myths about the UIPA.  Thus, OIP would like to encourage all agencies use  the Log and turn in their Semi-Annual Log Reports and Checklists to OIP by January 31, 2024.   

Mahalo!