The Justice Department’s latest summary of all agency Freedom of Information Act activity in fiscal 2014 shows a record number of requests.
“Agency FOIA offices received a record high 714,231 requests while also facing several other challenges including reduced staffing, tough fiscal times, and a three-week government shutdown during which requests continued to come in when there was no staff available to process them,” Justice’s Office of Information Policy wrote in a report and compilation uploaded onto FOIA.gov. “Managing these challenges, the government overall was able to process 647,142 requests while continuing to maintain a high release rate of over 91 percent for the sixth year in a row. The government overall also improved its average processing times for simple and complex track requests.”
The increase of 9,837 requests over the previous year continued a four-year trend of setting a record for requests, Justice said. For the sixth consecutive year, the Homeland Security Department received the most requests, with 291,242, a 26 percent increase. The next highest numbers of requests went to the departments of Justice, Defense, Health and Human Services, and Veterans Affairs. Continue>>>
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