32 C.F.R. § 1800.12 – Requirements as to form and content.

(a) Required information. No particular form is required. A request need only reasonably describe the records of interest. This means that documents must be described sufficiently to enable a professional employee familiar with the subject to locate the documents with a reasonable effort. Commonly this equates to a requirement that the documents must be locatable through the indexing of our various systems. Extremely broad or vague requests or requests requiring research do not satisfy this requirement.
(b) Additional information for fee determination. In addition, a requester should provide sufficient personal identifying information to allow us to determine the appropriate fee category. A requester should also provide an agreement to pay all applicable fees or fees not to exceed a certain amount or request a fee waiver.
(c) Otherwise. Communications which do not meet these requirements will be considered an expression of interest and NACIC will work with, and offer suggestions to, the potential requester in order to define a request properly.