The Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy has revealed that the government received approximately 1.2 million requests under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, during fiscal year 2023, a 29 percent increase from the number of requests received in the prior year.
OIP said in its Summary of Annual FOIA Reports for FY 2023 that the government collectively processed over 1 million requests, which is an increase of nearly 28 percent from FY 2022, and the total number of backlogged requests decreased by 2.84 percent to 200,843.
The departments of Homeland Security, Justice, Veterans Affairs and Defense and the National Archives and Records Administration received the vast majority, or 82 percent, of all government-wide FOIA requests made in FY 2023.
DHS received the highest number of requests with 580,205, followed by DOJ with 144,065, VA with 72,403, NARA with 66,064 and DOD with 55,731. Collectively, other agencies received 203,743 FOIA requests.