WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department has long failed to produce complete and timely records in response to public information requests, its independent auditor said as the department released its latest batch of emails related to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The Office of the Inspector General, in a report released on Thursday, cited the department for taking more than 500 days, or more than 16 months, to furnish records for the Office of the Secretary under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which calls for them within 20 working days.
Overnight Friday, the Department made public 2,900 additional pages of Clinton emails as part of its effort to release a total 55,000 pages of emails Clinton has turned over.
The auditor said the problems predate Clinton, who was President Barack Obama's secretary of state from 2009 until 2013, citing "procedural weaknesses" as well as inadequate staffing, poor training and a lack of a written procedures.
The report, which reviewed public information requests from 1996 to 2015, was released shortly before the State Department issued thousands more pages of Clinton's emails from her tenure.
Clinton, the Democratic front-runner in the November, 2016 presidential race, has come under fire for using her personal email while serving as the top U.S. diplomat. Republicans criticized her, and Clinton publicly apologized, but Democrats - including her closest rival - have dismissed the scandal.
The inspector general said it found "Department leadership has not played a meaningful role in overseeing or reviewing the quality of FOIA responses."
It said the problems were compounded by inaccuracies, citing instances when staff "reported that records did not exist, even though it was later revealed that such records did exist."
It called on the department to develop an improvement plan and boost staff levels, as well as take steps to ensure its records searches are complete and accurate by searching email records for all FOIA requests and reminding employees that emails should be preserved.
The latest release came at 2 a.m. on Friday, and also faced difficulties. While it helped meet the department's "volume" goal, the emails were missing some data fields needed to make them searchable, the department said in an statement.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said it is taking steps to address the FOIA deficiencies but said more resources are needed.
The inspector general's office said it will release a separate report on the use of non-governmental computer systems, but it gave no date.