On May 7, 2026, the Department of Justice announced that it had posted agency FOIA data from their annual FOIA reports for fiscal year 2025 (see FOIA Advisor’s earlier post). Below are some of the key metrics available on the DOJ-run website FOIA.gov.
Requests received: 1,707,197, up 13.7% from 1,501,432 in FY 2024
Top 5 recipients (same order as in FY 2024)
Dep’t of Homeland Sec.: 1,019,496
Dep’t of Justice: 159,743
Dep’t of Veterans Affairs: 124,435
Dep’t of Def.: 77,423
Dep’t of Health & Human Serv.: 55,006
Requests processed: 1,635,055, up 9% from 1,499,265 in FY 2024
Backlogged requests: 339,671, up 28.2% from 264,816 in FY 2024
Notable increases
Office of Personnel Mgmt.: 698% (207 to 1652)
Office of Mgmt. & Budget: 150.6% (909 to 2278)
Dep’t of Veterans Affairs: 130.6% (1539 to 3549)
Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau: 123.9% (142 to 318)
U.S. Agency for Int’l Dev.: 88.7% (593 to 1119)
Dep’t of Education: 85.9% (2458 to 4570)
Appeals received: 32,059, up from 20,115 in FY 2024
Appeals processed: 23,108, up from 18,575 in FY 2024
Backlogged appeals: Total not available
Total costs: $661,394,858, down 8.5% from 723,415,561 in FY 2024
Processing costs: $610,670,216
Litigation-related costs: $50,724,642
Total No. of Full Time FOIA Staff: 4823, down 14.3% from 5628
Total amount of fees collected: 2,511,193, up from 2,434,243 in FY 2024