Washington, September 30 — The story begins with a quiet crisis unfolding inside federal offices across the country, where access professionals are struggling to keep up with an unprecedented surge in Freedom of Information Act requests. What unfolded over recent months has pushed the system to its limits, with backlogs growing longer and response times slipping further out of reach for the public.
At its heart are the front-line stewards of government transparency — the access professionals tasked with receiving, tracking, and interpreting FOIA requests, determining what information can be released, applying fees, resolving disputes, and ensuring legal compliance through careful redactions and exemptions. Their work also includes conducting records searches, preparing documents for release, and maintaining organized, searchable systems that enable civic engagement and help prevent corruption.
Despite their critical role, many agencies lack the infrastructure to manage the workload effectively. Access professionals report they lack sufficient time, tools, funding, manpower, and technology to keep pace with the volume and complexity of incoming requests. The federal FOIA process is described as nearly stagnant, with new requests continually added to growing queues and little hope of timely resolution.
Agencies vary widely in how they handle FOIA operations — some are centralized, others decentralized — creating a stark disparity in capacity. Large agencies receiving over 100,000 requests annually face vastly different challenges than small agencies handling fewer than 50, yet most report backlogs that are growing too long to clear.
The root cause, as identified in the source material, is inadequate internal government infrastructure unable to manage and respond to information requests. A multi-faceted solution has been proposed: increasing funding through congressional action, analyzing internal staffing and operational procedures, and reviewing technology adoption. The FOIA Advisory Committee has issued two relevant recommendations.
Recommendation 2026-03 urges Congress to fund agencies based on workforce size, request volume and complexity changes over the past five years, backlogs, and operational structures. Recommendation 2026-11 advises agencies to study the infrastructure needed to fulfill open government responsibilities. In 2021, the Office of Government Information Services recommended that Congress direct the Government Accountability Office to assess agency funding adequacy and the potential impacts of additional resources on timely responses and backlog reduction.
While broad congressional support for FOIA funding is considered unlikely in the current administrative climate, individual lawmakers or the Comptroller General can initiate GAO studies. Externally, the Office of Information Policy, the Office of Governmental Information Services, and the Department of the Interior are developing a FOIA technology inventory to evaluate current tools.
Agencies are encouraged to assess how technology can modernize their internal processes, though adoption in government remains slow and protracted — often outdated by implementation and hindered by lack of interoperability due to agencies selecting tools based on individual needs and budgets without a consistent cross-agency system.
Looking ahead, the focus will be on whether Congress acts on the Advisory Committee’s recommendations, how agencies respond to the call for infrastructure studies, and whether the ongoing technology inventory leads to meaningful modernization efforts that can finally ease the burden on those who safeguard the public’s right to know.
