We have crunched the data of 118 agencies available on FOIA.gov for fiscal year 2021. Here are the highlights with comparisons to FY 2020:
838,164 requests received, an increase of 6 percent from FY 2020 (790,688 requests)
838,668 requests processed, an increase of 8.5 percent from FY 2020 (772,869 requests)
15,468 appeals received, an increase of 3.5 percent from FY 2020 (14,943 appeals)
15,522 appeals processed, an increase of 1.8 percent from FY 2020 (15,244 appeals)
153,227 backlogged requests, an increase of 8 percent from FY 2020 (141,762 requests)
4,734 backlogged appeals, a decrease of 6.7 percent from FY 2020 (5,072 appeals)
$38.5 million litigation costs a decrease of 10.1 percent from FY 2020 ($42.8 million)
$522.8 million administrative processing costs, a decrease of 5.4 percent from FY 2020 ($552.9 million)
$2.09 million fees collected from requesters, a decrease of less than 1 percent from FY 2020 ($2.11 million)
The largest number of requests were received by the following agencies:
Dep’t of Homeland Security: 442,650 requests (52.8 percent of government’s overall total)
Dep’t of Justice: 97,490 requests (11.6 percent)
Dep’t of Defense: 52,805 requests (6.3 percent)
Dep’t of Health & Human Services: 33,158 requests (3.9 percent)
Dep’t of Veterans Affairs: 27,762 requests (3.3 percent)
Dep’t of Agriculture: 20,956 requests (2.5 percent)
Small Business Administration: 18,127 requests (2.1 percent)
Dep’t of Transportation: 15,740 requests (1.8 percent)
Equal Employment Opportunity Comm’n.: 15,320 (1.8 percent)
Dep’t of Labor: 13,560 (1.6 percent)
Of note: in FY 2020, the National Archives and Records Administration occupied the fifth spot with 25,738 requests received. That figure dropped to 7,725 requests (the fifteenth spot) in FY 2021.