Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged at a press conference Tuesday to restore the production of federal records.
Those records, requested by members of the public, were said to be slowed by Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts.
Kennedy also said he will create a new website for HHS documents.
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Kennedy said he would seek to publish a greater number of documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This 1967 law allows members of the public to obtain government records with some limited exceptions, such as information pertaining to national security and trade secrets. The new landing page could include records requested and released previously but unavailable on the HHS website.
HHS currently hosts an online reading room for some records, but it does not serve as a repository of every document released under a FOIA request.
In a department-wide restructuring guided by DOGE and initiated by HHS on March 27, several disparate FOIA offices were consolidated into one, squeezing the department’s capacity to handle requests. The elimination of FOIA offices appeared to contradict Kennedy’s pledges of “radical transparency” and his pre-government track record of FOIA litigation to uncover records from HHS.
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HHS FOIA capacity will be restored, Kennedy said.
“We are restoring all of the FOIA offices, and we’re going to try to make it much easier for people to get the information. We’re going to try to post as much as we can,” Kennedy said. “We’re going to start a website with all former FOIA requests and the documents that were produced so people don’t have to do it again and again. We’re going to try to get as close as we can to total transparency in this agency.”
“I spent a lot of years litigating under FOIA, and I experienced the frustration of going year after year and being stonewalled by the agencies,” Kennedy added. “A lot of the people who are at HHS right now come from that background. So we all understand how important it is to have clear communication.”
“The papers we produce in this agency do not belong to us. They belong to the American people,” Kennedy said.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
