The Department of Defense has posted its annual FOIA report for fiscal year 2023. Below is a summary of the key data.
Requests received: 60,109, up 11.3 percent from 54,004 in FY2022.
Requests processed: 55,731, a 6.7 percent increase from 52,222 in FY 2022.
Backlog of requests: 19,882, up 7 percent from 18,567 in FY 2022.
Appeals received: 1,108, a decrease of 11.5 percent from 1,252 in FY 2022.
Appeals processed: 1,247, a decrease of less than 1 percent from 1,257 in FY 2022.
Backlog of appeals: 736, a 14.6 percent decline from 862 in FY 2022.
Total costs: $90,06 million, with $85.61 million in administrative costs and $4.45 million in litigation costs. The total costs in FY 2023 were 8.6 percent lower than in FY 2022 ($98.6 million).
Processing time: Notable laggards include the National Security Agency and Cyber Command, whose median processing times for “complex” requests were 966 days and 652.5 days, respectively—well above the agency overall time of 48.50 median days.