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Grieving Louisiana father faces $18,000 bill to access state records of son’s case
(www.theguardian.com)
Once, I was working a government contract and needed access to 3 documents that were linked but you needed special access. The documents weren't classified or anything. It's just a website that I had some access to but specifically not these 3 documents. We had to abide by these documents. So I tried going through the program manager and their office and reaching out to the contacts which all lead to "I don't really know the process for this" from everyone. So you think they are the approvers because they click "Approve" but apparently not. That was the person before them....probably. They just said they never actually are supposed to click "Reject" and it was just how the system worked.
Anyway, I submitted a FOIA and requested just the 3 PDFs and linked them. They responded that they will send me paper copies for $0.50 a page and I think something like $18/hour for "research" to locate them. So I ask the government if they will pay the bill to the government and they tell me we'd have to amend the contract and negotiate. The billion dollar company I worked for at the time said the expense to do so didn't justify the bill but also we didn't budget to pay for it so and since we didn't bid it we couldn't charge the customer (it wasn't a cost plus contract).
Anyway, I basically guessed all of the requirements and we were successful but it was just an aggravating situation were everyone including the custodians of the location on the website didn't know how to do anything. Apparently they only know that they receive some electronic notification that someone was approved to access said location and they just had to click an Accept button but in actuality had no idea who could really approve such things or the process involved to get to the point of the notification itself.