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Practically, this probably doesn't make a difference. FOIA relies on at least one person in the department to not be antagonistic towards the process. Otherwise they can just make up excuses. That's the standard experience for people sending requests.

I don't think anyone from the new DOGE would actually be helpful in responses anyway.

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If the data is on Slack servers, then Slack may be more than willing comply with FOIA.

Slack can't just willy-nilly hand over US government data to the public. There's a process that needs to be followed for FOIA requests as some classes of information are just not public. In fact, most of the data on a government Slack server would probably fall under those FOIA exemptions.

Not when I worked in the US govt. We were told that everything we did in our Slack was FOIA-able. FWIW.

FOIA requests go to the information owner, not to anyone hosting it. It's not even specific to IT. Paper notes/documents are also covered.

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