§ 518.25 - Description of requested record.

(a) Identification of the record desired is the responsibility of the member of the public who requests a record. The requester must provide a description of the desired record, that enables the Government to locate the record with a reasonable amount of effort. The Act does not authorize “fishing expeditions.” When a DoD Component receives a request that does not “reasonably describe” the requested record, it shall notify the requester of the defect. The defect should be highlighted in a specificity letter, asking the requester to provide the type of information outlined below in § 518.61(b) of this publication. Components are not obligated to act on the request until the requester responds to the specificity letter. When practicable, Components shall offer assistance to the requester in identifying the records sought and in reformulating the request to reduce the burden on the agency in complying with the Act. DA officials will reply to unclear requests by letter. The letter will—

(1) Describe the defects in the request.

(2) Explain the types of information in paragraph (b) of this section, and ask the requester for such information.

(3) Explain that no action will be taken on the request until the requester replies to the letter.

(b) The following guidelines are provided to deal with “fishing expedition” requests and are based on the principle of reasonable effort. Descriptive information about a record may be divided into two broad categories.

(1) Category I is file-related and includes information such as type of record (for example, memorandum), title, index citation, subject area, date the record was created, and originator.

(2) Category II is event-related and includes the circumstances that resulted in the record being created or the date and circumstances surrounding the event the record covers.

(c) Generally, a record is not reasonably described unless the description contains sufficient Category I information to permit the conduct of an organized, nonrandom search based on the Component's filing arrangements and existing retrieval systems, or unless the record contains sufficient Category II information to permit inference of the Category I elements needed to conduct such a search.

(d) The following guidelines deal with requests for personal records. Ordinarily, when personal identifiers are provided only in connection with a request for records concerning the requester, only records retrievable by personal identifiers need be searched. Search for such records may be conducted under Privacy Act procedures. No record may be denied that is releasable under the FOIA.

(e) The above guidelines notwithstanding, the decision of the DoD Component concerning reasonableness of description must be based on knowledge of its files. If the description enables DoD Component personnel with reasonable effort, the description is adequate.