The Department of Transportation posted its FOIA FY 2023 annual report on Friday, which may or may not have been an intentional news dump. As you’ll see below, the key data is pretty mediocre.

• Requests received: 17,136 a 10 percent decrease from FY 2022, when it received 19,090 requests.

• Requests processed: 16,458, a 13 percent decrease from FY 2022, when it processed 18,958 requests.

• Backlog of requests: 5,913, up 10 percent from 5,362 at end of FY 2022.

• Appeals received: 78, which is 22 percent lower than in FY 2022 (100).

• Appeals processed: 78, which is 90 percent higher than in FY 2022 (41)

• Backlog of appeals: 229, up 3 percent from 222 at the end of FY 2022.

• Costs: A total of S18.67 million, with $17.95 million in administrative costs and nearly $719k in litigation costs. The department’s total costs in FY 2023 were 23 percent higher than its total costs in FY 2022 ($15.15 million).

• Processing time: The FAA took about one year to process its administrative appeals. Half of all perfected and “complex” requests to OIG took about 500 days or more to complete.