California Attorney General Files FOIA Request Seeking Answers About Trump Administration’s Proposed Religious Conscience Rule

SACRAMENTO –  California Attorney General Xavier Becerra yesterday filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) seeking information about the Trump Administration’s new proposed rule, the so-called Protecting Statutory Conscience Rights in Health Care, and new delegation of authority to create a new division within the Office for […]

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HHS Only Department to Meet Obama’s FOIA Backlog Reduction Order

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is the only cabinet level agency that was able to meet President Obama’s 2009 instruction to reduce FOIA backlogs by 10 percent per year. Out of the 15 federal departments surveyed, HHS reduced its backlog by 12.7 percent* per year. The average for all federal departments was an 8.21 percent increase. The departments of Homeland Security, State, and Housing and Urban Development are some of the worst offenders, with an average increase of nearly 30 percent per year.

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US Government’s Health Data Website Gets a Refresh

The Department of Health and Human Services last week unveiled a redesign of its data repository, HealthData.gov.

The site aims to make government health-related data sets more accessible to the public for analysis; the new HealthData.gov migrated old content to DKAN, an open-source, Drupal-based platform built by NuCivic, a tech company based in New York. Continue>>>

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Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh files suit over FOIA request

From Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:  Federal health officials broke federal laws by stonewalling legal attempts to learn how they created new rules requiring employers to pay for insurance that covers contraception, sterilization and abortion, according to lawyers representing the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh.

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