OPINION & ORDER Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), Plaintiff Alec Ferretti requested the Defendant United States Department of State (“State Department” or “DOS”) to produce a copy of “the Index or finding aid to the Reports of Death of a U.S. Citizen Abroad” from 1975 to the present. Declaration of Regina L. Ballard. Ex. 1 (“Ferretti Request”), Dkt. 31-11. The State Department asserts that no such document exists. Plaintiffs filed this action to compel the State Department to search for and produce responsive records. Complaint (“Compl.”), Dkt. 1, 2. The parties cross-moved for summary judgment. See Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment, Dkt. 30; Plaintiffs’ Cross-Motion for Summary Judgment, Dkt. 36. Defendant’s motion for summary judgment is GRANTED, and Plaintiffs’ cross-motion for summary judgment is DENIED. BACKGROUND2 When a U.S. embassy or consulate receives a report that a U.S. citizen has died abroad, it creates a Consular Report of Death of a U.S. Citizen Abroad (“CRDA”). Declaration of Regina L. Ballard (“Ballard Decl.”), Dkt. 31, 8. A typical CRDA lists the decedent’s birth date and the circumstances surrounding his or her death. Id. The State Department maintains CRDAs in both paper and digital forms. Id. There are at least 331,000 CRDAs that exist in paper form and are stored at the Washington National Records Center of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. Id. 9. Most, but not all, of the paper CRDAs have been digitized. Id. 10. To digitize a paper CRDA, a State Department employee scans and imports the record into the Passport Information Electronic Records System (“PIERS”), an electronic database maintained by DOS. Id. 8; Reply Declaration of Sharon Westmark (“Westmark Decl.”), Dkt. 47, 10. When an employee uploads a CRDA to PIERS, he or she may manually input into PIERS any personal identifiable information (“PII”) that can be gleaned from the paper CRDA, such as the decedent’s name, date of birth, Social Security Number, place of birth, date of death, and place of death. Reply Declaration of Regina L. Ballard (“Ballard Rep. Decl.”), Dkt. 46, 17. Once this process is complete, the paper CRDAs are usually placed into boxes; the boxes are organized by the date on which the records contained therein were digitized and by the unique identifier or batch number assigned to the group of archival materials to which they belong. Ballard Decl. 9. Prior to the creation of PIERS in 2000, State Department records were stored in a different database called the Passport File Miniaturization (“PFM”). Id.
12-13. When PFM was active, there was an index that could be used to navigate the records it contained, but that index — like PFM itself — no longer exists. Id. PIERS is different. Rather than relying on an index, users navigate PIERS via a search function, which allows State Department employees to retrieve CRDAs and other passport records by entering PII associated with the person about whom records are sought. Id. 14. In September 2019, Plaintiff Alec Ferretti filed the following FOIA request with the State Department: I am looking to obtain a copy of the Index or finding aid to the Reports of Death of a U.S. Citizen Abroad from 1975-present…. If the records are somehow born digital, an index might be a database extract of the name of the decedent, along with the date and location of death, however, i [sic] doubt the records are in such a format. If there has been a database created in the modem day of an index to the deaths (such as in a spreadsheet), I would be most interested in obtaining such as file. I am not sure in what format the Reports of Death are, so I cannot specify exactly what type of document I would expect to receive. I would like to know whose Reports of deaths are in possession of the State Department, and when those people died. Whichever documents by whichever name contain that information is the scope of my request. Ferretti Request. According to a declaration from Regina Ballard, the Division Chief for the Office of Records Management, Records Review and Release Division within Passport Services, Bureau of Consular Affairs of the State Department, there are no records responsive to Mr. Ferretti’s request. Ballard Decl.
