FOIA News: HHS posts annual report for FY 2025

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services posted its FY 2025 annual report yesterday, more than seven weeks after March 1st deadline. Here are the highlights (and lowlights):

• Requests received: 55.006, up from 49,053 in FY 2024.

• Requests processed: 47,489, up from 46,923 in FY 2024.

• Backlogged requests increased from 11,149 to 18,360.

• 49.72 average days to process “simple perfected requests; 198.91 average days for “complex” requests; and 315.73 average days for expedited requests.

• Requests for fee waivers: 2441 granted and 312 denied.

• Requests for expedited processing: 125 granted and 1415 denied.

• Total processing costs: $56.2 million, down from $80.2 million in FY 2024.

  Fees collected from requesters: $656,731, down from $752,786 in FY 2024.

For more comparisons, see HHS’s FY 2024 report here.

Court opinion issued Apr. 21, 2026

Leopold v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- granting in part and denying in part plaintiffs’ motion for attorney’s fees and costs in case concerning post–2020 election records requests; ruling that although plaintiffs “substantially prevailed” and were entitled to fees, their fee request was excessive and required substantial reduction; concluding that DOJ’s early cooperation and production of records without significant court intervention warranted a reduction in pre-summary judgment fees by 50%; further holding that plaintiffs’ limited success on the merits justified reducing summary judgment fees to approximately 20% of the requested amount, particularly where billing entries did not consistently tie work to successful claims; finding additional reductions appropriate where entries were vague, block-billed, or failed to segregate time spent on successful versus unsuccessful issues; further holding that plaintiffs’ request for fees-on-fees was itself excessive and capping recovery at roughly 30% of the merits-stage award to avoid a “windfall”; awarding costs in full where adequately documented and reasonably incurred; emphasizing that FOIA fee awards are governed by “rough justice, not auditing perfection,” and must reflect degree of success rather than total hours expended.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

FOIA News: NextGen 3.0 FOIA Tech Showcase

Register Now for the NexGen 3.0 FOIA Tech Showcase for Federal Agencies

DOJ/OIP, FOIA Post, April 21, 2026

The Office of Information Policy (OIP) is pleased to announce that the Technology Committee of the Chief FOIA Officers (CFO) Council, in conjunction with OIP and the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), will host a four-day event for federal agencies called the NexGen 3.0 FOIA Tech Showcase on May 11-14, 2026.    

The Showcase is intended to identify FOIA technology solutions for federal agencies in response to existing FOIA case processing and backlog challenges, as well as raise awareness of existing technological capabilities utilizing artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies.  A variety of vendors will provide video demonstrations of their technology products for use in agency FOIA administration.  Agency Q&A with the vendor will follow each demonstration.

This event is open to federal agency employees with a .gov or .mil email address only.  Registration is required by May 7, 2026. You can register here.  Additional details about the Chief FOIA Officers Council and the meeting, including the agenda, will be available on the Chief FOIA Officers Council Technology Committee website on FOIA.gov.

Read original post here.

FOIA News: DOJ releases its FY 2025 annual report

The Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy has posted the department’s long overdue annual FOIA report for fiscal year 2025. Below are the key metrics:

• 159,743 requests received, up from 132,527 in FY 2024—a 20.5% increase.

• 147,588 requests processed, down from 157,180 in FY 2024—a 6.5% decrease.

• 29,308 backlogged requests, up from 21,567 at the close of FY 2024—a 35% increase.

• 2484 appeals received and 2586 processed; appeals backlog reduced from 211 to 190.

• 18.13 average days to process all “simple” perfected requests; 246.44 average days for “complex” requests; and 49.92 average days for expedited requests.

• Fee waiver requests: 2539 granted and 1902 denied.

• Requests for expedition: 1604 granted and 5082 denied.

• Toal program costs: $118,068.573, up from $112,233,711 in FY 2024.

• Fees collected from requesters: $120,125, up from $36,016 in FY 2024.

For more comparisons, see DOJ’s FY 2024 report here.

FOIA News: Seven pressures reshaping FOIA today

The new era of FOIA: How AI, security and policy are transforming government transparency

Commentary, Benjamin Tingo, Fed. News. Network, Apr. 20, 2026

For 60 years, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has been the most powerful tool for the public to gain insight into government actions. FOIA administration has always been cumbersome for government agencies, but it is now entering a period of profound transformation, driven by technological change and greater public engagement.

The central question is whether agencies can modernize quickly enough to not only sustain current levels of responsiveness and backlog reduction mandates, but rise to meet the challenges of increased public awareness, new technologies and fewer resources.

Read more here.

FOIA News: ASAP planning FOIA training in July

The American Society of Access professional is planning a two-day training program in July in the D.C. area. See ASAP’s website posting here.

FOIA News: ICYMI, Opexus hit with class action over data breach

Government Contractor Opexus Hit with Class Action Lawsuit Over February 2025 Data Breach

By Olivia DeRicco, ClassAction.org, Mar. 16, 2026

Opexus, formerly known as AINS, has been hit with a proposed class action lawsuit alleging that the government technology contractor failed to prevent a data breach in which two former employees were able to access and delete highly sensitive government and third-party information.

The 54-page data breach lawsuit asserts that Opexus, which operates platforms for processing federal government records and claims to handle sensitive data for nearly every U.S. federal agency, failed to implement reasonable cybersecurity measures or use even the “most basic” personnel screening measures to protect confidential government and sensitive personal information from a “catastrophic” data breach.

According to the case, Opexus experienced a data breach in February 2025 when two former employees, twin brothers who had been previously prosecuted and convicted by the United States government for federal hacking and wire-fraud offenses before being hired by Opexus, used insider privileges to extract, delete and corrupt databases storing government records, including records related to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, enforcement actions, audits and investigations.

Read more here.

[Thanks to Michael Sarich, former FOIA Director at the Dep’t of Veterans Affairs, for bringing this story to our attention]

FOIA News: NARA seeks nominations for next FOIA Advisory Committee

The National Archives and Records Administration has renewed the FOIA Advisory Committee for a seventh term and is now seeking nominations for Committee members to serve from 2026 to 2028, according to a notice published today in the Federal Register. The Committee will include up to 20 members representing a wide range of sectors and expertise. Nominations must be submitted by June 1, 2026.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: A federal trilogy

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Labor/WHD, GS 11, location negotiable, closes 4/22/26 (public).

Sup. Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of the Treasury/TIGTA, GS 15, multiple locations, closes 4/28/26 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Health & Human Serv./CMS, GS 12, Woodlawn, MD, closes 4/29/26 (non-public).

Court opinion issued April 13, 2026

Animal Legal Def. Fund v. U.S. Dep't. of Agric. (N.D. Cal.) -- holding that: (1) the "reading room" provision of Section 552(a)(2)(D) does not require the agency to post records that have not yet been created, as the statute applies only to records that "have been released" under a prior request and not to "mere possibilities in the future, like the shadows swirling around Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come"; emphasizing that the court is “bound by the plain meaning of the statute” and that it is “quite mistaken to assume… that whatever might appear to further the statute’s primary objective must be the law”; finding further that the plaintiffs failed to identify existing records with enough specificity to compel posting; and (2) the agency improperly withheld borrower names and addresses under Exemptions 3 and 6, because such data fell under the "payment information" exception of 7 U.S.C. § 8791 and because the privacy interests of federal loan recipients were outweighed by public interest; in "open[ing] agency action to the light of public scrutiny"; holding further that the agency properly withheld the underlying substance of producer-provided information under Exemption 3, noting that the statutory protection for such data does not "vanish simply because USDA repeated the information in its own documents."

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.