Annual Report Data for 95 Agencies Now on FOIA.gov

OIP has received Fiscal Year 2011 Annual FOIA Report submissions from all 99 federal departments and agencies subject to the FOIA. Of these 99 reports, the data is now available on FOIA.gov, the Department’s dedicated governmentwide FOIA website, for 95 departments and agencies, including data from the Departments of Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security, and agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. From the data already available on FOIA.gov, we can already see some significant changes in data between FY 2010 and FY 2011. Even though we are still waiting to post the data from four agencies, including the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, and the Treasury, we already know that across the government:

• The number of requests received increased to 624,352 from 597,415
• The number of requests processed, which increased to 611,691, from 600,849
• For those requests where records were located and processed, the number of requests where records were released in full or in part increased to 397,661 from 377,481
• The number of backlogged requests increased to 82,986 from 69,526. This is due to the dramatic increase in the number of requests received by the Department of Homeland Security in FY 2011, up 35% from 130,098 in FY 2010 to 175,656 in FY 2011, which in turn contributed to a higher request backlog at that Department.

Earlier this month, OIP looked at some of the highlights from FY 11 here at the Department of Justice, which you can read about here. Once all agency data has been received and reviewed, OIP will prepare and post a full summary of FY 11 data on our website. OIP is working with the FOIA staffs of the remaining four agencies that do not yet have data on FOIA.gov, and we will be posting this data as soon as it is available. While the Annual FOIA Reports have been received and initially reviewed by OIP, we are working with the staffs at these four agencies to help resolve any issues with creating both paper and open-source formatted versions of their reports, as well as working to fix any discrepancies with previous Annual FOIA Reports submitted by these agencies. We will let you know through FOIA Post when this remaining data has been made available on FOIA.gov. While FOIA.gov currently contains data from federal departments and agencies going back to FY 2008, FY 2011 marks the second consecutive year where data from every federal department and agency will be available on the site. This is another important step forward in achieving one of the Department of Justice’s goals in creating FOIA.gov, namely to ensure that governmentwide FOIA data is made more accessible to the public in a format that allows easy comparison between agencies and over time.