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FOIA Annual Report Statistics

Each year agencies prepare a report for the Attorney General that describes their FOIA program. 5 U.S.C. § 552(e). These annual reports are supposed to be prepared by February 1, and report on the agency's activities during the previous fiscal year (October 1-September 30), but the reports are frequently late.  These reports contain useful information for requesters concerning:

• The number of FOIA requests that the agency processes each year;
• The median number of days that the agency takes to process different types of requests;
• The number of requests backlogged at the agency at the end of the fiscal year, and the median number of days that those requests were pending;
• The exemptions that the agency has invoked to withhold records, and how many times those exemptions were invoked
• How often the agency's initial determinations were changed when after the requester challenged them in an administrative appeal;
• The number of full-time staff of the agency devoted to processing requests under FOIA.

The links below contain tables that summarize the backlogs reported by the federal agencies with the largest number of FOIA requests.

• Agency FOIA Workloads & Backlogs
  • Fiscal Year 2005
  • Fiscal Year 2004
  • Fiscal Year 2003
  • Fiscal Year 2002
  • Fiscal Year 2001
  • Fiscal Year 2000

Information on over 150 agencies, including each agency's regulations on FOIA, annual reports, and contact information, can be found in our Agency Database.

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