(a) In general. Search, review, and reproduction fees will be charged in accordance with the provisions below relating to schedule, limitations, and category of requester. Applicable fees will be due even if a subsequent search locates no responsive records or some or all of the responsive records must be denied under one or more of the exemptions of the FOIA.

(b) Fee waiver requests. Records will be furnished without charge or at a reduced rate when ODNI determines:

(1) As a matter of administrative discretion, the interest of the United States Government would be served, or

(2) It is in the public interest to provide responsive records because the disclosure is likely to contribute significantly to the public understanding of the operations or activities of the United States Government and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requester.

(c) Fee waiver appeals. Denials of requests for fee waivers or reductions may be appealed to the Director of the Intelligence Staff, or his functional equivalent, through the ODNI Chief FOIA Officer. A requester is encouraged to provide any explanation or argument as to how his or her request satisfies the requirements of this regulation and the Act. See §1700.14 for further details on appeals.

(d) Time for fee waiver requests and appeals. Appeals should be resolved prior to the initiation of processing and the incurring of costs. However, fee waiver requests will be accepted at any time prior to an agency decision regarding the request, except when processing has been initiated, in which case the requester must agree to be responsible for costs in the event of an adverse administrative or judicial decision.

(e) Agreement to pay fees. If you make a FOIA request, it shall be considered a firm commitment by you to pay all applicable fees chargeable under this regulation, up to and including the amount of $25.00, unless you ask for a waiver of fees. When making a request, you may specify a willingness to pay a greater or lesser amount.

(f) Advance payment. The ODNI may require an advance payment of up to 100 percent of the estimated fees when projected fees exceed $250.00, not including charges associated with the first 100 pages of production and two hours of search (when applicable), or when the requester previously failed to pay fees in a timely fashion, for fees of any amount. ODNI will hold in abeyance for 45 days those requests where advance payment has been requested.

(g) Schedule of fees—(1) In general. The schedule of fees for services performed in responding to requests for records is as follows:

(2) Application of schedule. Personnel search time includes time expended in manual paper records searches, indices searches, review of computer search results for relevance, and personal computer system searches. In any event where the actual cost to ODNI of a particular item is less than the above schedule (e.g., a large production run of a document resulting in a cost less than $5.00 per hundred pages), then the actual lesser cost will be charged.

(3) Other services. For all other types of output, production, or reproduction (e.g., photographs, maps, or published reports), ODNI will charge actual cost or amounts authorized by statute. Determinations of actual cost shall include the commercial cost of the media, the personnel time expended in making the item to be released, and an allocated cost of the equipment used in making the item, or, if the production is effected by a commercial service, then that charge shall be deemed the actual cost for purposes of this regulation.

(h) Limitations on collection of fees—(1) In general. No fees will be charged if the cost of collecting the fee is equal to or greater than the fee itself. That cost includes the administrative costs to ODNI of billing, receiving, recording, and processing the fee for deposit to the Treasury Department and, as of the date of these regulations, is deemed to be $10.00.

(i) Fee categories. There are four categories of FOIA requesters for fee purposes: Commercial use requesters, educational and non-commercial scientific institution requesters, representatives of the news media requesters, and all other requesters. The categories are defined in §1700.2 and applicable fees will be assessed as follows:

(1) Commercial use requesters: Charges which recover the full direct costs of searching for, reviewing, and duplicating responsive records (if any);

(2) Educational and non-commercial scientific institution requesters, and representatives of the news media requesters: Only charges for reproduction beyond the first 100 pages;

(3) All other requesters: Charges which recover the full direct cost of searching for and reproducing responsive records (if any) beyond the first 100 pages of reproduction and the first two hours of search time which will be furnished without charge.

(j) Associated requests. If it appears a requester or a group of requesters acting in concert have requested portions of an apparently unitary request for the purpose of avoiding the assessment of fees, ODNI may aggregate any such requests and charge accordingly. Requests from multiple requesters will not be aggregated without clear evidence. ODNI will not aggregate multiple unrelated requests.