How Government Cuts Could Impact Your Right to Information
Recent CNN reporting on the Trump administration’s firing of personnel handling Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sparks concern over the future of the FOIA system. This move by the administration puts a system that is already strained by lack of staff and funding at even further risk, and raises the question of whether other FOIA officers across the federal service are safe or if more will be fired in the coming days.
Signed into law in 1967, the Freedom of Information Act is one of the crowning achievements of government transparency in the United States. It gives the public the right to request federal government records, representing decades of advocacy centered around the idea that a government should be transparent and accountable to its people. Under FOIA, any record from any federal agency is subject to being disclosed with the exceptions for national security, foreign policy, private, and legal proceedings. This provides journalists, researchers, civic society, and the wider public with valuable insights into how their government is executing its obligations. Since its creation, FOIA requests have been used to reveal information that exposes wasteful government spending, threats to public health and safety, excessive secrecy, and more. Based on the First Amendment’s fundamental freedom of the press, FOIA acknowledges the right to access government places and papers.
Among the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) ongoing purge of thousands of federal employees, members of OPM’s “privacy team,” as well as staff responsible for FOIA requests at OPM, have been fired, according to familiar sources who spoke with CNN.
At FAS, our teams have used FOIA and declassification reviews for decades as a means of increasing transparency and holding the government accountable. This work has led to the declassification of the size and history of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile and the discovery of inadequate security at nuclear weapons storage sites.
Steven Aftergood, former director of the FAS Project on Government Secrecy, is a long-term FOIA practitioner. In 1997, Aftergood was a plaintiff in a FOIA lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), resulting in the declassification of the CIA budget for the first time in 50 years.
The current legislative design of FOIA “fails to balance supply and demand,” Aftergood said in a conversation with FAS staff about the recent firings at OPM, and how firing FOIA officers will further strain an already overburdened and under-resourced process. ”Requesters can easily generate high volumes of requests that overwhelm an agency’s ability to respond. Nor does Congress reliably provide the resources that are needed to meet the demand. Breakdowns and mutual frustration are the predictable result.”
FOIA requires that agencies reply with a determination to valid requests within 20 business days, but many agencies can’t keep up with requests. While FOIA applies to all agencies, each agency implements it differently. For example, according to the Government Accountability Office, total government backlogs of FOIA requests surpassed 200,000 in 2022.
“Some agencies respond to FOIA requests diligently and promptly. That has been my experience with the US Patent and Trademark Office, for example,” said Aftergood. “Some agencies barely comply with the law at all, allowing requests to linger for years or even a decade and more. The US Air Force is notorious in this respect.”
In an era of such massive sweeps upending federal programs, increased transparency is even more important to provide the public with the knowledge necessary to respond and hold the government accountable. Now is the time to bolster and improve the FOIA process, not to fire those who are working–with already limited resources–to hold it together. In order to ensure the transparency of government actions required for a democratic society, Congress should reform FOIA, directing further funding to equip trained personnel with the resources they need. To assist in evaluating agency needs, the Project on Government Oversight suggests agencies include a line-item FOIA budget during the appropriation request process.
For 58 years, FOIA has put power and knowledge directly in the hands of the people. Any erosion of transparency mechanisms such as FOIA–whether by direct abolishment or de-prioritization that leads to eventual decay–sets a concerning precedent. The Trump administration should reverse the firing of FOIA officers at OPM and allocate increased funding for FOIA personnel across the federal service.
In an era of such massive sweeps upending federal programs, increased transparency is even more important to provide the public with the knowledge necessary to respond and hold the government accountable.
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