Consider what a Department-level form is for. DD Form 2086 — DD Form 2086, Record of Freedom of Information Processing Cost, January 2003 — was established to Freedom of Information (FOI) Processing Cost, and it was placed in the DD sequence because the underlying transaction occurs throughout the Defense establishment in substantially the same shape. Standardizing the record was cheaper and more reliable than letting six services each design their own.
This is why the arrangement matters to you rather than only to the archivists. not stated governs the form throughout the Department, with not stated as the responsible office, so the record you create is legible outside your own component. Joint assignments, agency details and cross-service transactions all depend on that: the paperwork does not have to be reconstructed each time it crosses a boundary.
Current edition: not stated, status not stated. Understand why that date is worth attention here. When the Department reissues a form, the replacement takes effect across every component simultaneously, so an older copy is not merely locally out of date — it is out of date in every office that might receive it.
The form is laid out top to bottom in a sequence that reflects how the record will be read, not merely how it was drawn. Identification comes first because everything below it is understood in relation to a named person, unit or transaction; substantive entries follow; certification closes the document because certification attests to what precedes it. Filling out of order tends to produce internal inconsistencies — an entry that made sense before the header was settled and does not afterward.
Check the edition date before you type anything, against not stated. Old blanks accumulate in shared drives for years, and the cost of one is not obvious until a reviewer cannot find a field. Because DD forms are revised centrally and replaced across the Department in a single action, there is no component still tolerating the old layout as a local practice.
Where a specific field is genuinely unclear, the instructions printed on the form come first and not stated governs where the two do not agree.
Download the form
Formats available: PDF, across 2 pages and about 61 fields. That several formats coexist is a consequence of scale — the Department cannot standardize the software on every desk that needs this form, so it standardizes the document instead.
The difference between a fillable and a printable pdf is a difference in what the file contains. A fillable release carries an interactive layer: each box is a defined field with a name and a data type, and what you type is stored as data inside the document. A printable release has no such layer — it is an image of the page, and the only place your answers can go is onto paper. The distinction matters downstream, because a Department record often gets scanned and forwarded several times before it reaches its final file, and typed characters survive that chain in a way pen strokes do not.
The xfdl file is a survival from an earlier phase of Defense form automation. Xfdl is the IBM Lotus Forms format, and for a long period it was the Department's standard for electronic forms — fielded broadly enough that it still appears in distribution sets today. It opens in IBM Lotus Forms Viewer or a compatible client and nowhere else; a pdf reader will report it as damaged, which is not a fault in the file.
Nothing here is charged for. Published Defense forms are public documents and distribution carries no fee, in any format. One caution about software: fill the form in a desktop pdf application rather than a browser tab. Browser-embedded viewers implement field behaviour inconsistently, and the failure mode is silent loss of everything you entered.
What the form asks for
- Enter request number. First two digits are calendar year followed by a dash, then the component's request number
- 2. Type of request. Press space bar to mark X in first box if initial, second box if appeal.
- 4. Action office.
- Enter date completed. Enter as four digit year, two digit month, two digit day.
- Enter total clerical hours (E-9/G S -8 and below) to the nearest 15 minutes. Search (Time spent locating the information from the files.)
- Cost. (Total hours multiplied by clerical hourly rate of $20.00)
- Review/excising (Time spent reviewing the document and determining if it must retain classification or if certain information could be excised, allowing declassification.) Enter hours.
- Cost.
- Total hours spent on other activity. (Such as duplicating, hand carrying, restoring files)
- Cost.
- Enter total professional hours to the nearest 15 minutes.. O-1, O-6/G S -9, G S -15. Search.
- Cost. (Total hours multiplied by professional hourly rate of $44.00)
- Review/excising. Total hours.
- Cost.
- Other activity, coordination or denial. Total hours.
- Cost.
- Enter total executive hours to the nearest 15 minutes. O-7, G S -16/E S 1 and above. Search.
- Cost. (Total hours multiplied by executive hourly rate of $75.00)
- Review/excising, total hours.
- Cost.
- Other, including coordination/approval/denial, total hours.
- Cost.
- Computer search. Enter total hours of machine time (not PC, desktop, or laptop), when the amount of time required to complete a search on a government owned (not leased) computer is known and hourly operating costs are available).
- Enter hourly rate for computer search time, if known.
Submission follows not stated and whatever local instruction supplements it. Make a copy before the original leaves. Department forms travel across organizational lines by design, and the administrative distance that makes them useful is the same distance that makes tracing a lost one difficult.
Cross-referenced documents are found by series and number, with nothing further required. That the DD sequence is unified across the Department means a cited number identifies one form and no other, which is the practical payoff of centralizing the numbering in the first place.
Procedures that touch both Department and service processes will cite forms from both sequences, and the coincidence of numbers between them is exactly that — coincidence. An Army proponent maintains the DA series for the Army; not stated or another Department office maintains the DD series for the whole Department. Two independent registries, two independent numbering runs, no correspondence at any value.
Editions change for reasons that originate above the form itself. The prescribing directive is reissued and the form follows; the information the Department needs to collect changes and the fields change with it; the statutory notice language is amended and every form carrying that notice is republished. None of these events announces itself to the person who downloaded a copy last year, which is why confirming not stated at the moment of download is the only reliable check available to you.
The role of this page is narrow and worth stating plainly. It makes a published Defense form available and explains its structure. It does not advise, does not interpret policy for your circumstances, and cannot indicate how any office will treat a completed copy — those judgments rest with the authorities that own the process. Direct such questions to not stated, to the administrative office that services you, or to the authority named in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2086?
- DD Form 2086, Record of Freedom of Information Processing Cost, January 2003
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?