The U.S. Department of State received 13,864 FOIA requests and processed only 9,167 requests in fiscal year 2022, increasing its request backlog by 25 percent from 14,941 in FY 2021 to 18,765, according to its annual FOIA report posted on March 1, 2023. The Department’s processing and litigation costs totaled $39.4 million, while it once again burdened taxpayers by collecting zero dollars in processing fees. The overall response times for processed perfected requests were reported to be 40 days for “simple” requests and 115 days for “complex” requests. The oldest ten pending perfected requests ranged from 3,843 to 3,954 days old and were received more than 15 years ago.