‘Significant’ staff cuts drive rising FOIA backlogs
The latest reports from agency chief FOIA officers illustrate how the Trump administration's workforce cuts drove another increase in FOIA backlogs.
By Justin Doubleday, Fed. News Network, Mar. 20, 2026
The Trump administration’s workforce cuts and an ever-increasing number of Freedom of Information Act requests have deepened challenges for already strained federal offices charged with overseeing FOIA processing.
Annual FOIA reports and related chief FOIA officer reports, released by the Justice Department in recent weeks, offer insights into an unprecedented year for federal FOIA offices. While governmentwide FOIA backlogs have been on the rise for years, the workforce reductions in 2025 compounded existing challenges facing FOIA offices, the reports show.
Most FOIA offices are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence and other automation technologies to streamline the FOIA process and make up for staffing gaps. But many of those efforts are early in development and have largely failed, so far, to make much of a dent in rising backlogs.
At the Defense Department, the FOIA backlog rose by 42% to more than 30,000 cases across the department by the end of fiscal 2025. A FOIA request is backlogged when an agency fails to respond within the statutory timeframe of 20 working days.
DoD’s chief FOIA officer attributed the increase in backlogs to “loss of staff, increases in the number of incoming requests, to include complexity of those requests, and litigation.”
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