The Trump administration’s workforce cuts and an ever-increasing variety of Freedom of Info Act requests have deepened challenges for already strained federal workplaces charged with overseeing FOIA processing.
Annual FOIA experiences and associated chief FOIA officer experiences, launched by the Justice Division in current weeks, supply insights into an unprecedented 12 months for federal FOIA workplaces. Whereas governmentwide FOIA backlogs have been on the rise for years, the workforce reductions in 2025 compounded present challenges dealing with FOIA workplaces, the experiences present.
Most FOIA workplaces are more and more turning to synthetic intelligence and different automation applied sciences to streamline the FOIA course of and make up for staffing gaps. However a lot of these efforts are early in growth and have largely failed, thus far, to make a lot of a dent in rising backlogs.
On the Protection Division, the FOIA backlog rose by 42% to greater than 30,000 instances throughout the division by the top of fiscal 2025. A FOIA request is backlogged when an company fails to reply throughout the statutory timeframe of 20 working days.
DoD’s chief FOIA officer attributed the rise in backlogs to “loss of staff, increases in the number of incoming requests, to include complexity of those requests, and litigation.”
The lack of workers was the “primary driver of the backlog increases,” DoD added, with the Deferred Resignation Program being probably the most regularly cited purpose for workers losses at part FOIA workplaces.
DoD experiences that throughout its elements, there was a 37% loss or turnover in FOIA officers.
“The problem was particularly acute for some,” the report added, noting that the Protection Info Techniques Company’s FOIA operations had been dealt with by a single particular person, whereas the Protection Technical Info Heart’s FOIA workers was “reduced to zero.”
“The department’s plan is to re-evaluate staffing again to determine if we have a sufficient number of staff to process the requests currently received and continue to receive,” the DoD report states. “We will continue to review our process to find ways to improve processing times.”
DoD can also be “reviewing technical resources that may assist in improving our processing of FOIA requests,” the report continues. DoD’s chief FOIA workplace is working with the chief data officer to “understand the present capabilities of agentic, generative and/or predictive artificial intelligence and how we can utilize it to make FOIA processes more efficient.”
Some businesses that obtain a heavy quantity of FOIA requests have but to publish their annual statistics or chief FOIA officer experiences, together with the Division of Homeland Safety, Division of Well being and Human Companies, the Justice Division and the Division of Veterans Affairs.
However businesses which have posted their 2026 experiences largely reported comparable challenges to DoD. A number of the particular findings embody:
- The Commerce Division’s backlog elevated by greater than 500 requests to 1,968 by the top of fiscal 2025. Commerce’s chief FOIA officer attributed the rise to “an increase in the number and complexity of requests received … a loss of staff and resulting delay in backfilling FOIA professional positions, inefficient search and review processes, and FOIA litigation.”
- The Training Division’s FOIA backlog practically doubled to 4,570 requests on the finish of final 12 months. The company’s chief FOIA officer reported that Training noticed a 15% enhance in requests, whereas the company’s “staffing level was lower” than earlier years. The Trump administration has been trying to dismantle the Training Division.
- The Power Division’s FOIA backlog elevated by about 600 instances to a complete of two,277. The company’s chief FOIA officer attributed the backlog to “turnover in staff and overall increase of incoming requests,” together with these asking for “any-and-all type communications.” Power is at present being sued over a plan to cull older FOIA requests from its backlog.
- The Division of Housing and City Improvement noticed its FOIA backlog double to 1,092 requests final 12 months. HUD’s chief FOIA officer experiences that the company FOIA workplace misplaced 40% of its workers, together with contractor assist, whereas additionally navigating an 80% enhance in requests since fiscal 2024.
- The State Division’s FOIA backlog spiked by 6,000 instances to a complete of 27,619 by the top of fiscal 2026. State’s chief FOIA officer ascribed the growing backlog to a rising variety of requests and a close to quadrupling within the variety of FOIA lawsuits over the previous decade. In the meantime, final 12 months, “staff attrition and contract downsizing left several key FOIA leadership and staff positions vacant,” State’s chief FOIA officer added.
- The Transportation Division’s FOIA backlog elevated from simply over 8,000 requests to 11,250 within the area of a 12 months. DoT’s chief FOIA officer experiences that the company acquired 11% extra FOIA requests in 2025, whereas it misplaced 10% of its full-time FOIA workers.
Shifting FOIA obligations
Even reductions and modifications with non-FOIA workers have impacted the rising backlogs.
The Normal Companies Administration, as an example, noticed a 43% enhance in FOIA requests final 12 months. Nearly all of these had been acquired by GSA’s central administrative workplace, which misplaced 30% of its workers to attrition, deferred resignation and retirements final 12 months, GSA’s chief FOIA officer wrote in explaining why the company’s FOIA request backlog elevated.
The Advantage Techniques Safety Board’s request backlog elevated final 12 months because the MSPB navigated a “significant loss of staff,” the company’s chief FOIA officer wrote.
“While many of the departed employees did not work directly with the FOIA department, the loss and resulting shift in responsibilities did impact the FOIA department,” the officer added, pointing to the departure of MSPB’s human assets director and a subsequent delay within the FOIA workplace receiving HR-related data.
The MPSB’s director of data companies additionally served because the company’s FOIA public liaison. When that individual left their job, “the responsibilities of the permanent FOIA analyst increased, necessitating times when focus was directed away from processing requests in favor of administering the overall program,” the chief FOIA officer reported.
At NASA, a comparatively small FOIA workplace was hit arduous when it misplaced two personnel and a detailee place. The area company stated the staffing departures had been the “primary factor” in its elevated FOIA backlog.
“This reduction, combined with significant agency-wide staffing shortages resulting from the departures, has created substantial resource challenges for meeting current and anticipated FOIA demands,” NASA’s chief FOIA officer wrote.
Now, NASA is evaluating tips on how to handle personnel gaps, together with by redistributing FOIA obligations throughout remaining workers, exploring “technology solutions to improve processing efficiency,” and dealing with different NASA packages to enhance doc search and overview.
“The agency recognizes that adequate staffing is essential to maintaining timely and effective FOIA responses and will continue to monitor resource needs as circumstances evolve,” the NASA report provides.
Tech is ‘certainly the future’
Even earlier than the Trump administration’s workforce cuts, FOIA workplaces reported dealing with short-staffing and useful resource challenges. And lately, many have begun exploring how newer software program, automation and even AI may streamline FOIA.
At DoD, part FOIA workplaces have now began to shift from “basic tools to sophisticated solutions,” in response to the division’s 2026 report.
“A prominent theme is the exploration and implementation of AI and automation to tackle time-consuming tasks,” it provides.
The Protection Info Techniques Company, as an example, has deployed an automatic bot “specifically designed to redact financial information.” In the meantime, the Protection Logistics Company is updating a robotic course of automation bot “to address increased demand,” whereas different protection elements are exploring how generative AI could be built-in into the data search course of.
“Several components are undertaking major overhauls of their foundational case management systems,” DoD added in its newest report.
The Justice Division’s Workplace of Info Coverage (OIP), which oversees FOIA compliance throughout authorities, has additionally emphasised the position of know-how in enhancing FOIA administration. OIP’s annual FOIA awards embody a class on “exceptional advancements in IT” to enhance FOIA administration.
“Technology is certainly the future for us,” Sean Glendening, director of OIP, stated throughout a March 18 webinar hosted by the People for Prosperity Basis. “FOIA is kind of the ultimate big data problem to solve, which is what AI is great at. Where we see better technology and AI being used is all along the life cycle of the request.”
Many FOIA workplaces now report utilizing AI and associated applied sciences to assist with totally different components of the FOIA course of.
The Inside Division’s FOIA workplace started utilizing a pure language processing device to determine comparable requests, in addition to automation to streamline communications round eDiscovery searches, Inside’s chief FOIA officer reported this 12 months.
Inside can also be utilizing a “document review platform” to finish duties like redaction.
“As DOI has recently been rolling out these tools, we do not yet know how much time and financial resources will be saved, but the early signs of increased productivity are promising,” Inside’s chief FOIA officer added.
The Chief FOIA Officer’s Council will host a digital FOIA know-how “showcase” this Could. It should give distributors an opportunity to reveal FOIA-related applied sciences, together with synthetic intelligence, to businesses.
“I think in the next few years, you are going to see every agency actively using AI in some aspects,” Glendening stated. “Some will use it more, some will use it less, but I think it will be across the board.”
Nevertheless, he added that the there must be a “human element” to utilizing AI for FOIA.
“The AI that we would be using at this point is suggestive to a human,” Glendening stated. “If it’s something that requires more human analysis, the AI can flag that for a human reviewer to go through and do that more detailed analysis, where you may want an attorney doing that, versus AI.”
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