Office of Information Practices

As our “grand finale” for Sunshine Week, Hawaii’s Office of Information Practices (OIP) is pleased to announce that it has posted OIP’s Report of State Agencies’ Master UIPA Record Request Year-End Log for FY 2015 on the Reports page of its website at oip.hawaii.gov.  The Report is based on data provided by 204 agencies from the state Executive branch departments, the Governor’s Office, the Lt. Governor’s Office, the Judiciary, the University of Hawaii, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, and other independent agencies.

Overall, the data shows that the typical record request to state agencies was granted in whole or in part and was completed in about seven work days.  Of the 2,188 formal record requests logged by state agencies, 99% were completed in FY 2015.  Of the 2,179 completed requests, 66% were granted in full, 14% were granted/denied in part, 4% were denied in full, and the agency was unable to respond or the requester withdrew or abandoned the request in the remaining 16% of the cases.

The average number of search, review and segregation (SRS) hours spent on a “typical” non-personal, noncomplex record request was 1.11, as compared to 8.30 average hours for a complex record request.  Although the 102 complex record requests constituted only 5% of all requests, they accounted for 22.6% ($17,970) of the total gross fees and costs incurred by agencies ($79,423) and 5.6% ($2,123) of the total amount recovered from all requesters ($37,603).

No fees or costs were paid for 1,928 requests, or 88% of the completed requests.  Of the 251 requesters that paid any amount, 125 (49.8%) paid less than $5.00, and 86 (34.3%) paid between $5 and $49.99 for their requests.  Only 40 requesters (15.9% of 251 paying requesters) paid $50 or more.  The two highest paying requesters were commercial entities who each paid $12,796.96 in costs only and accounted for 68% of the total $37,633 in total fees and costs paid to state agencies.

For the first time, all four counties also reported Log data for FY 2015.  Because it was the counties’ first year of using the Log, there were a number of reporting errors that OIP is still correcting so the report of the county agencies’ Log results will be delayed.  For the county report, please check for future What’s New articles or the reports page at oip.hawaii.gov.