In general. The Department shall charge fees that recoup the full allowable direct costs it incurs in processing a FOIA request in accordance with the provisions of this part and with the OMB Guidelines. It shall use the most efficient and least costly methods to comply with requests for records made under the FOIA. The Department will not charge fees to any requester, including commercial use requesters, if the cost of collecting a fee would be equal to or greater than $25.00. The Department shall attempt to notify the requester if fees are estimated to exceed $25.00. Such notification shall include a breakdown of the fees for search, review, or duplication, unless the requester has expressed a willingness to pay fees as high as those anticipated.

Definitions. The following definitions apply for purposes of this section:

Direct costs are those costs the Department incurs in searching for, duplicating, and, in the case of commercial use requests, reviewing records in response to a FOIA request. The term does not include overhead expenses.

Search costs are those costs the Department incurs in looking for, identifying, and retrieving material, in paper or electronic form, that is potentially responsive to a request. The Department shall attempt to ensure that searching for material is done in the most efficient and least expensive manner so as to minimize costs for both the Department and the requester. The Department may charge for time spent searching even if it does not locate any responsive record, or if it withholds the record(s) located as entirely exempt from disclosure. Further information on current search fees is available by visiting the FOIA home page at www.foia.state.gov and reviewing the Information Access Guide.

Duplication costs are those costs the Department incurs in reproducing a requested record in a form appropriate for release in response to a FOIA request.

Review costs are those costs the Department incurs in examining a record to determine whether and to what extent the record is responsive to a FOIA request and the extent to which it may be disclosed to the requester, including the page-by-page or line-by-line review of material within records. It does not include the costs of resolving general legal or policy issues that may be raised by a request.

Categories of requesters. ”Requester fee category” means one of the categories in which a requester will be placed for the purpose of determining whether the requester will be charged fees for search, review, and duplication. “Fee waiver” (see § 171.16) means the waiver or reduction of processing fees that may be granted if the requester can demonstrate that certain statutory standards are satisfied. There are three categories of requesters: commercial use requesters, distinct subcategories of non-commercial requesters (educational and non-commercial scientific institutions, representatives of the news media), and all other requesters.

A commercial use requester is a person or entity who seeks information for a use or purpose that furthers the commercial, trade, or profit interest of the requester or the person on whose behalf the request is made. In determining whether a requester belongs within this category, the Department will look at the way in which the requester intends to use the information requested. Commercial use requesters will be charged for search time, review time, and duplication in connection with processing their requests.

Distinct subcategories of non-commercial requesters. (A) An educational institution requester is a person or entity who submits a request under the authority of a school that operates a program of scholarly research. A requester in this category must show that the records are not sought for a commercial use and are not intended to promote any particular product or industry, but rather are sought to further scholarly research of the institution. A signed letter from the chairperson on an institution's letterhead is presumed to be from an educational institution. A student seeking inclusion in this subcategory who makes a request in furtherance of the completion of a course of instruction is carrying out an individual research goal and does not qualify as an educational institution requester. See a summary of the OMB Fee Guidelines at: https://www.justice.gov/oip/foia-guide-2004-edition-fees-and-fee-waivers. Educational institution requesters will not be charged for search and review time, and the first 100 pages of duplication will be provided free of charge.

Example 1. A request from a professor of geology at a university for records relating to soil erosion, written on letterhead of the Department of Geology, would be presumed to be from an educational institution.

Example 2. A request from the same professor of geology seeking drug information from the Food and Drug Administration in furtherance of a murder mystery he is writing would not be presumed to be an institutional request, regardless of whether it was written on institutional stationery.

A non-commercial scientific institution requester is a person or entity that submits a request on behalf of an institution that is not operated on a “commercial” basis and that is operated solely for the purpose of conducting scientific research, the results of which are not intended to promote any particular product or industry. Non-commercial scientific institution requesters will not be charged for search and review time, and the first 100 pages of duplication will be provided free of charge.

A representative of the news media is any person or entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of the public, uses its editorial skills to turn the raw materials into a distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience. The term news means information that is about current events or that would be of current interest to the public. News media include television or radio stations broadcasting to the public at large and publishers of periodicals (but only in those instances when they can qualify as disseminators of “news”) who make their products available to the general public. “Freelance” journalists shall be regarded as working for a news media entity if they can demonstrate a solid basis for expecting publication through that entity, such as by a contract or past publication record. These examples are not all-inclusive. A representative of the news media will not be charged for search and review time, and the first 100 pages of duplication will be provided free of charge.

All other requesters are persons or entities that do not fall into the requester categories defined above. All other requesters will be provided the first two hours of search time and the first 100 pages of duplication free of charge, and will not be charged for review time.

Searches for responsive records. The Department charges the estimated direct cost of each search based on the average current salary rates of the categories of personnel doing the searches. Updated search and review fees are available at www.foia.state.gov

Manual (paper) and computer searches. For both manual and computer searches, the Department shall charge the estimated direct cost of each search based on the average current salary rates of the categories of personnel doing the searches.

Review of records. Only requesters who are seeking records for commercial use may be charged for time spent reviewing records to determine whether they are responsive, and if so, releasable. Charges may be assessed for the initial review only, i.e., the review undertaken the first time the Department analyzes the applicability of a specific exemption to a particular record or portion of a record

Duplication of records. Paper copies of records shall be duplicated at a rate of $0.15 per page. Other charges may apply depending on the type of production required. Where paper documents must be scanned in order to comply with a requester's preference to receive the records in an electronic format, the requester shall pay the direct costs associated with scanning those materials. For other forms of duplication, the Department shall charge the direct costs.

Other charges. The Department shall recover the full costs of providing services such as those below:

Sending records by special methods such as express mail, overnight courier, etc.

Providing records to a requester in a special format.

Providing duplicate copies of records already produced to the same requester in response to the same request.

Payment. Fees shall be paid by either personal check or bank draft drawn on a bank in the United States, or a postal money order. Remittances shall be made payable to the order of the Treasury of the United States and mailed to the Office of Information Programs and Services, U.S. Department of State, State Annex 2 (SA-2), 515 22nd Street NW., Washington, DC, 20522-8100. A receipt for fees paid will be given upon request.

When certain fees are not charged. The Department shall not charge search fees (or in the case of educational and non-commercial scientific institutions or representatives of the news media, duplication fees) when the Department fails to comply with any time limit under 5 U.S.C. 552(a)(6), unless unusual circumstances (see § 171.11(b)) or exceptional circumstances exist. Exceptional circumstances cannot include a delay that results from a predictable agency workload of requests unless the agency demonstrates reasonable progress in reducing its backlog of pending requests. See 5 U.S.C. 552(a)(6)(C). Apart from the stated provisions regarding waiver or reduction of fees, see § 171.16, the Department retains the administrative discretion to not assess fees if it is in the best interests of the government to do so.