Feds Taking Longer to Answer FOIA Requests

[Rose Siding]

WASHINGTON -- Citizens, groups and corporations are putting in fewer requests for information from the federal government, but it's taking longer to get an answer and they get turned down more often, a study reported Friday.

In a study of 13 Cabinet departments and nine agencies, the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government found that the number of unprocessed requests rose from 104,225 at the end of fiscal 2004 to 148,603 at the end of fiscal 2005 on Sept. 30, 2005.

Meantime, the number of requests that were processed between 2004 and 2005 dropped from 522,817 to 477,937. As a result, unprocessed requests rose from 20 percent of the total processed to 31 percent.

Full or partial releases of the information requested declined from 67 percent of all requests in 2004 to 63 percent in 2005.
...
Comparing the 2005 data with 2000, the last year before the Bush administration took office, the coalition study found that the number of government employees working on FOIA requests in the 22 agencies studied declined by 23 percent, from 4,288 to 3,315.

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-freedom-of-information,0,4602996.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

[Betsy Ross]

1. I'm sorry, but why doesn't this surprise me.

In fact, I am surprised at what is released under the FOIA. I would expect '06 to be a record year for refusals for documents given the administrations need to keep their asses covered. Please, November 7 hurry up and come.

[Sherman A1]

2. Could be

That they are dragging their heals and could be that they are getting more and more of them and the in boxes are filling up. I know everywhere else the mantra is "do more with less", so this might just be the reason.