mr. verdi, your organizations made a few requests in the past, and i guess over the years you've had some adequate responses and inadequate responses. my question to you is based on your experience, have you seen an improvement in the last year for your foia requests, or has it been declining or stayed the same? >> sadly, we have maintained a 100% noncompliance rate or the agency has a 100% noncompliance rate with requests in terms of meeting statutory deadlines. there's nor an improvement or degradation in the response. >> these are based on grammatical errors or substantive errors, or why are the requests not granted in a timely fashion? >> they simply vice president responded -- haven't responded to the request or exemptions outside the period we had to challenge through the administrative process, but in any case, we did not receive documents prior to the 20-day working day deadline. they violated deadlines in appeals and the agency missed its deadlines to answer a lawsuit. >> so, in other

mr. verdi. >> thank you, mr. chairman, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. i, senior counsel at time i called up it. i am director of ethics of the government project. we have a long-standing interest in government, particularly the power of transparency to ensure accountability for executive agencies heard since ethics establishment in 1994, we filed the freedom of information request with agencies including the department of homeland security concerning domestic surveillance programs and emerging the turnip privacy. the foia is hoped to guarantee the public's right to know for generations of americans. president obama made government and transparency hallmark of administration on its first day in office, stating that the freedom of information should be administered with the clear presumption. in the face of doubt, openness prevails, unquote. political review is antithetical to the fundamental values of the art. an ethics history practice, we have never never encountered policies that the dh program it issued at today's hearing. epic often clashes with agen