(a) Title VII refers to title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended by Public Law 92-261, 42 U.S.C. (Supp. II) 2000e et seq.
(b) Commission refers to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
(c) Freedom of Information Act refers to 5 U.S.C. 552 (Pub. L. 90-23 as amended by Pub. L. 93-502).
(d) Commercial use refers to a use or purpose by the requester of information for the information that furthers the requester's commercial, trade or profit interests. Requests for charge files by profit-making entities, other than educational and noncommercial scientific institutions and representatives of the new media, shall be considered for commercial use unless the request demonstrates a noncommercial use.
(e) Direct costs refers to those expenses that EEOC actually incurs in searching for and duplicating (and, in the case of commercial requesters, reviewing) records to respond to a request. Direct costs include, for example, the salary of the employee performing the work (the basic rate of pay for the employee plus 16 percent of that rate to cover benefits) and the cost of operating duplicating machinery. Not included in direct costs are overhead expenses such as costs of space and heating or lighting of the facility in which the records are stored.
(f) Search refers to the time spent looking for and retrieving material that is responsive to a request. It includes page-by-page or line-by-line identification of information within documents and also includes reasonable efforts to locate and retrieve information from records maintained in electronic formats. EEOC employees should ensure that searching for materials is done in the most efficient and least expensive manner reasonably possible. For example, employees shall not search line-by-line when merely duplicating a document would be quicker and less expensive.
(g) Duplication refers to the process of making a copy of a record or document necessary to respond to a FOIA request. Such copies can take the form of paper copy, microform, audio-visual materials, electronic formats (for example magnetic tape or disk), among others. Employees shall honor a requester's specified preference of format of disclosure if the record is readily reproducible with reasonable efforts in the requested format by the office responding to the request.
(h) Attestation refers to the authentication of copies of Commission documents by an affidavit or unsworn declaration from the records custodian without the Commission Seal.
(i) Certification refers to the authentication of copies of Commission documents by an affidavit or unsworn declaration from the records custodian under the Commission Seal.
(j) Agency record includes any information maintained for an agency by an entity under Government contract, for the purposes of records management.
(k) Fee category means one of the three categories that agencies place requesters in for the purpose of determining whether a requester will be charged fees for search, review and duplication, including commercial requesters, non-commercial scientific or educational institutions or news media requesters, and all other requesters.
(l) Fee waiver means the waiver or reduction of processing fees if a requester can demonstrate that certain statutory standards are satisfied including that the information is in the public interest and is not requested for a commercial interest.
(m) FOIA Public Liaison means an agency official who is responsible for assisting in reducing delays, increasing transparency and understanding of the status of requests, and assisting in the resolution of disputes.
(n) News refers to information about current events that would be of current interest to the public.
(o) Representative of the news media refers to 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. Examples of news media entities are television or radio stations broadcasting to the public at large and publishers of periodicals (but only if such entities qualify as disseminators of ``news'') who make their products available for purchase by, subscription by, or free distribution to, the general public. As methods of news delivery evolve (for example, the implementation of electronic dissemination of newspapers through telecommunication services), such alternative media shall be considered to be news-media services. A freelance journalist shall be regarded as working for a news-media entity if the journalist can demonstrate a solid basis for expecting publication through that entity, whether or not the journalist is actually employed by the entity. A publication contract would present a solid basis for such an expectation; the Commission may also consider the past publication record of the requester in making such a determination. [40 FR 8171, Feb. 26, 1975, as amended at 52 FR 13830, Apr. 27, 1987; 70 FR 57511, Oct. 3, 2005; 78 FR 36650, June 19, 2013]