FOIA Language Question

Good question.

I went through and reviewed a number of succesful requests for federal official’s calendars, and didn’t seem anything super fancy was needed for a succesful request.

One requester was succesful just asking for “Calendar for the following months and years.”

A bit broader FOIA for calendar information asked for:

a copy of all records for every day in September and October of 2013 of the following types:\ 1) All paper or electronic calendars kept by Mr. Randall L. Exley or his staff which keeps the agendas and appointments for Mr. Randall L. Exley’s daily activities, appointments, and obligations, etc.\ 2) All “to do” lists kept by Mr. Randall L. Exley or his staff which were used in routine business to track tasks which Mr. Randall L. Exley needed to complete for that day, week, or month.\ 3) A log of all incoming and outgoing phone calls to both Mr. Randall L. Exley’s office and cellular telephone lines including the phone number of the other party, whether the call was inbound or outbound, the length of the call, the and name of the other party if this is included in any log file or phone bill.

And then a FOIA for a public official’s calendar that was a bit in between that worked well:

All available calendars, daily itineraries, and schedules of activity for [person’s name here] from December 23, 2014 through the date this request is processed.

Nothing super fancy, but be sure to include a date range and make sure it’s clear whose calendar you’re interested!