User Fees

DOD Fees for Providing Information Not Current and Consistent Gao ID: GAO-02-34 October 12, 2001

The National Defense Authorization Act for 2001 authorized the military archives to (1) charge fees to persons requesting information and (2) retain collected fees to help defray costs of providing the information. Although none of the archives has yet implemented a fee, one archive plans to do so by October 2001. The Department of Defense's (DOD) archives and other offices are also authorized under both the User Charge Statute and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to charge for information provided to the public. However, neither of these statutes authorizes an agency to retain those fees. The four designated archives are charging fees to public requesters but are not using the fee schedule mandated by the DOD regulation implementing the User Charge Statute. Similarly, DOD's fee schedules for charges under FOIA are outdated. DOD's inconsistent use of the authority to charge fees and the use of outdated DOD fees schedules result in uncollected fees of a million dollars or more annually and inconsistent handling of public requests for historical information.

Recommendations

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