According to data entered on DOJ's website FOIA.gov, federal agencies processed 822,182 FOIA requests in fiscal year (FY) 2017, which is an increase of 8.2% from FY 2016 (759,842 requests). This is the first time that agencies have processed more than 800,000 requests in a fiscal year. As reported earlier, agencies also received a record-high number of requests in FY 2017 (818,275).
The fifteen cabinet agencies collectively processed 664,515 FOIA requests, or 80.8 percent of the total FOIA requests processed government-wide. Only 5 of the cabinet agencies, however, processed more requests than they received in FY 2017: Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Labor, State, and Veterans Affairs. Notably, the State Department was able to reduce the number of its pending requests in FY 2017 from 27,852 to 13,804.
The least productive cabinet agencies were Housing and Urban Development, Interior, and Education, which failed to process 32%, 26%, and 25% percent of their requests on hand, respectively. Two of the least productive non-cabinet agencies were the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which processed only 42% and 46% percent of their request inventories, respectively.
DOJ's Office of Information Policy is expected to shortly release a detailed summary of all FY 2017 annual reports.