[Code of Federal Regulations]
[Title 45, Volume 3]
[Revised as of October 1, 2004]
From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access
[CITE: 45CFR612.4]

[Page 122]
 
                        TITLE 45--PUBLIC WELFARE
 
                 CHAPTER VI--NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
 
PART 612_AVAILABILITY OF RECORDS AND INFORMATION--Table of Contents
 
Sec. 612.4  Processing requests.

    (a) Monitoring of requests. The NSF Office of the General Counsel 
(OGC), or such other office as may be designated by the Director, will 
serve as the central office for administering these regulations. For 
records maintained by the Office of Inspector General, that Office will 
control incoming requests made directly or referred to it, dispatch 
response letters, and maintain administrative records. For all other 
records maintained by NSF, OGC (or such other office as may be 
designated by the Director) will control incoming requests, assign them 
to appropriate action offices, monitor compliance, consult with action 
offices on disclosure, approve necessary extensions, dispatch denial and 
other letters, and maintain administrative records.
    (b) Consultations and referrals. When the Foundation receives a 
request for a record in its possession that originated with another 
agency or in which another agency has a substantial interest, it may 
decide that the other agency of the Federal Government is better able to 
determine whether the record should or should not be released under the 
FOIA.
    (1) If the Foundation determines that it is the agency best able to 
process the record in response to the request, then it will do so, after 
consultation with the other interested agencies where appropriate.
    (2) If it determines that it is not the agency best able to process 
the record, then it will refer the request regarding that record (or 
portion of the record) to the agency that originated or has a 
substantial interest in the record in question (but only if that agency 
is subject to the FOIA). Ordinarily, the agency that originated a record 
will be presumed to be best able to determine whether to disclose it.
    (3) Where the Foundation reasonably believes that multiple requests 
submitted by a requester, or by a group of requesters acting in concert, 
constitute a single request that would otherwise involve unusual 
circumstances, and the requests involve clearly related matters, they 
may be aggregated. Multiple requests involving unrelated matters will 
not be aggregated.
    (c) Notice of referral. Whenever the Foundation refers all or any 
part of the responsibility for responding to a request to another 
agency, it ordinarily will notify the requester of the referral and 
inform the requester of the name of each agency to which the request has 
been referred and of the part of the request that has been referred, 
unless such notification would disclose information otherwise exempt.