How to File a FOIA Request (And What to Do When the Government is Slow to Respond)
Americans filed more than 1.5 million Freedom of Information Act requests last year, the highest number ever recorded (Office of Information Policy [OIP], 2025, p. 3).
The federal government managed to process nearly as many but still ended the year with 267,056 requests stuck in a backlog, a 33% spike (OIP, 2025, p. 11) over the previous year’s backlog volume. Yet for all of that congestion, more than 93 out of every 100 requests that reached a final decision resulted in at least some disclosure (OIP, 2025, p. 8). Government information in the United States remains largely accessible but it requires knowing what to ask for and knowing what to do when an agency goes quiet.
What is FOIA?
Enacted in 1966, the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. §552) gives any person (citizen or not, individual or corporation) the right to request existing, unpublished records from federal executive branch agencies, without providing a reason (Stuessy, 2015, p. 1). Whereas the older Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 required requesters to justify their need for information, FOIA presumes access to information and puts the burden on the part of agencies to justify withholding it.
Crucially, FOIA applies only to executive branch departments and agencies, not Congress and not the federal courts. That still covers an enormous area of government operations: environmental impact studies at the EPA, product inspection records at the FDA, enforcement action history at the FTC, immigration files at DHS, and so on. If a federal agency created or obtained the record, your ability to readily access and view that information falls under FOIA.
How do I Fill Out A FOIA Request?
Filing is simpler than most people think. The FOIA.gov portal, maintained by the Department of Justice, lets requesters submit to multiple agencies from a one interface and track the status of pending requests. For agencies not on the portal, a written request, either by paper letter or email, addressed to the agency’s FOIA office is sufficient.
A strong FOIA request has three components:
(1) a specific description of the records sought.
(2) a preferred format (electronic delivery is faster).
(3) a fee waiver statement if applicable.
Vague requests are more likely to be routed to the “complex” processing track, where average wait times exceed 40 days government-wide. In FY2024, simple-track requests averaged 44 days to process, the highest in the data series (OIP, 2025, p. 14). Simple requests averaged 39.4 days in FY2023 (OIP, 2024, p. 14) and 40.8 days in FY2022 (OIP, 2023, p. 14), each nearly double the 20-business-day statutory deadline.
When requesting information, it pays to be precise.
Agencies are required by statute to acknowledge receipt within 20 business days and must provide a determination within that same window, though in practice, nearly all fall short of this standard, particularly for anything requiring inter-agency consultations, in which one organization seeks another’s input on disclosability. These types of requests grew from 7,431 in FY2023 to 8,294 in FY2024, with 4,100 pending at year-end (OIP, 2024, p. 16; OIP, 2025, p. 16).
What Information Typically Gets Withheld?
FOIA’s statutory exemptions cover nine categories:
Exemption 1: Classified national security information.
Exemption 2: Internal agency personnel rules.
Exemption 3: Data specifically exempted from disclosure by a statute other than FOIA.
Exemption 4: Trade secrets.
Exemption 5: Deliberative process communications.
Exemption 6: Personal privacy.
Exemption 7: Certain law enforcement records.
Exemption 8: Certain information regulating financial institutions.
Exemption 9: Geological and geophysical information and data.
(Stuessy, 2015, pp. 3–4).
In practice, two exemptions dominate government-wide denials. In FY2024, Exemption 6 (personal privacy) and Exemption 7(C) (law enforcement privacy) together accounted for 63.22% of all exemption citations, up from 59.5% in FY2023 (OIP, 2024, p. 10; OIP, 2025, p. 10).
Exemption 7(C) overtook Exemption 6 as the single most-cited in FY2024 (32% vs. 31.22%) (OIP, 2025, p. 10), a shift that may reflect growth in law enforcement–related requests.
Even so, full denials are relatively rare. In FY2024, only 7.17% of substantively processed requests resulted in a complete refusal based on exemptions, a percentage consistent with previous years (FY2022 - 7.17%, FY2021 - 7.6%) (OIP, 2022, p. 9; OIP, 2023, p. 9; OIP, 2025, p. 8).
However, there’s been a trend of more redactions this decade. The most common outcome of a partial disclosure has increased to making up 70.88% of dispersed information in FY2024 (OIP, 2025, p. 9), up from 66.19% in FY2023 (OIP, 2024, p. 9) and notably higher than the 61.1% it made up in FY2020 (OIP, 2021, p. 9).
My Request Was Denied, ignored, or only partially addressed. Can I appeal?
Yes! A denial, a partial disclosure, or simply no response within the statutory period all trigger the right to file an administrative appeal with the head of the agency in question. These appeals are free, require no attorney, and succeed more often than most requesters realize. In FY2023, the appeal backlog continued a years-long decline, ending at 4,646 pending cases (OIP, 2024, pp. 19–20); the average processing time was 86.99 days (OIP, 2024, p. 20).
If an appeal fails, requesters may seek mediation through the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) within NARA, a non-exclusive, advisory alternative to litigation (Stuessy, 2015, p. 4), or file suit in federal district court.
The Quantified Conclusion
Five years of government data tells a story of a system under pressure but still functioning. Request volume nearly doubled, from 790,688 in FY2020 (OIP, 2021, p. 3) to 1,501,432 in FY2024 (OIP, 2025, p. 3). Costs rose from $595.8 million to $723.4 million over that same time period (OIP, 2021, p. 21; OIP, 2025, p. 21), while full-time staff fluctuated and only recently began recovering (OIP, 2025, p. 21). Yet, encouragingly, the release rate held above 93% in every year measured.
For the pragmatic sleuths among you, the data suggest four strategies:
(1) Be specific (vague requests wind up in the slow lane).
(2) Use FOIA.gov to route requests correctly and track their status.
(3) Ask for electronic delivery, which reduces processing time.
(4) Appeal if denied or ignored. The right is free, the backlog is improving at the appellate level compared to the request level, and agencies oftentimes reverse initial decisions.
Note: Statistical trend data cited throughout this analysis was drawn from the DOJ Office of Information Policy's Annual FOIA Report Summaries for fiscal years 2020 through 2024. Statutory and procedural background references CRS Report R41933 (Stuessy, 2015), available at https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R41933.