STATUS REPORT
exemptions less than in the previous year. In fact, the invocation of FOIA exemptions dropped by nearly 54,000 over the past year, more than a 10% reduction.
Of the nine exemptions contained in the Freedom of Information Act under which agencies can or must withhold requested information, Exemption 2 and Exemption 5 in particular often receive the most attention and emphasis among advocates for greater FOIA transparency. Exemption 2 allows agencies to with withhold information related to the internal personnel rules and practices of the agency, while Exemption 5 allows agencies to withhold intra-agency memoranda and letters that are subject to legal privilege. Because agencies have the most discretion about whether to invoke these exemptions as a basis for withholding requested information, many view agencies' invocation of Exemption 2 and Exemption 5 as particularly indicative of the government's commitment to transparency under FOIA.
Over the past fiscal year, agency reliance on these two exemptions fell dramatically. Across the government agency reliance on Exemption 2 dropped by 19% and reliance on Exemption 5 dropped by nearly 22%. By this measure too, agencies have made greater transparency through FOIA a priority, another indication that the President's message is having an effect at the ground level.
Processing More Requests than Requests Received. Agency efforts to implement the President's and the Attorney General's instructions to agencies to disclose information requested under FOIA where possible necessarily reduces how fast agencies can process FOIA requests. Careful consideration of each request, operating under a presumption of disclosure rather than its opposite, takes time. Partial disclosures in particular, which require more than a simple "yes" or "no" by the agency, can be especially time consuming. In the Attorney General's words, agencies must "take reasonable steps to segregate and release nonexempt information." Notwithstanding the increased effort required to do so, agencies overall processed more requests than they received this past fiscal year, and many agencies have also increased the number of FOIA requests they processed as compared with last fiscal year. For example, the USDA increased its processed FOIA requests by 49%. HHS increased its processed FOIA requests by 39%. DOE increased its processed FOIA requests by 23%. The Department of Defense increased its requests processed by 10%.
Request Backlogs Reduced. Agencies have also reduced their backlogs of pending FOIA requests over the past fiscal year, meeting an ambitious Administration goal to reduce FOIA backlogs by 10%. The ninety-seven agencies across the government that are subject to FOIA collectively reduced their backlogs by 10.1%. This marks the second straight year of backlog reduction across the government. Excluding the independent agencies and commissions and focusing on the CFO Act agencies specifically, agencies reduced their backlogs by almost 12%, even while the number of incoming FOIA requests to those agencies also increased by almost 6%.
Here again, a number of departments made great strides. For example, the Department of Defense decreased its backlog by 31%. HHS decreased its backlog by 46%. DOT decreased its backlog by 39%. And at the agency level too, many agencies substantially reduced their backlogs. The U.S. Army, for instance, did so by 68%. HHS's Centers for Medicare &
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