The adoption of modernized information technology systems and capabilities — including artificial intelligence tools — can help federal agencies more efficiently process Freedom of Information Act requests, several Republican lawmakers said during a Senate hearing on Tuesday, even as governmentwide layoffs have gutted some of the offices responsible for fulfilling these appeals for public records.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, noted during the hearing that the number of FOIA requests filed in fiscal year 2024 surpassed 1.5 million — a 25% increase from FY 2023. The number of processed public records requests during the same period was just under 1.5 million, although that figure also included requests from previous years.
“In our digital era, the government must adapt to serve its citizens — especially when it comes to transparency, Grassley said. “This is especially important given the volume of requests we’re starting to see.”
Grassley referenced a March 2024 Government Accountability Office report, which found that governmentwide backlogs of FOIA requests had increased over the past decade. While the watchdog cited staffing shortages and increasingly complex requests as some of the contributing factors to the longer wait times, the use of outdated and limited technologies was also identified as a major barrier to streamlining the overall FOIA process.
GAO wrote that federal officials interviewed for the report said technology enhancements, in part, “can allow agencies to ensure that component FOIA offices are using the same systems, which can streamline coordination and document reviews across an agency.”
To address the often slow pace for processing FOIA requests that agencies deem complex, Mike Howell — executive director of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project — said the government should “lean into technological advancements, using potentially AI and automation to get these documents out more quickly,” adding that “it shouldn’t be such a human-intensive process.”
The Oversight Project, which is set to become its own independent entity, said it has filed more than 100,000 total FOIA requests. An October 2024 ProPublica article claimed the organization’s deluge of requests was “clogging the pipeline at federal agencies in an apparent attempt to find employees a potential Trump administration would want to purge.”
FOIA officials have also been exploring, and even sometimes piloting, the use of AI tools to improve the FOIA filing process and help to clear up their backlogs of unfilled requests. The Chief FOIA Officers Council, which works to enhance the administration and processing of public records requests, also established a working group in its technology committee in 2020 to examine the use of AI in the FOIA process.
As for the actual benefits of AI, Howell said the capabilities could be particularly useful when it comes to the usability of electronic FOIA reading rooms, where agencies publicly share frequently requested records. The ability for AI to better identify specific phrases and words across vast amounts of documents, Howell added, could also substantially reduce the time it takes to process requests.
The hearing comes in the midst of the Elon Musk-helmed Department of Government Efficiency’s push to trim governmentwide workforces and contracts. The Trump administration moved last week to lay off 10,000 personnel across the Department of Health and Human Services, with these terminations reportedly cutting the entire FOIA teams at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and other agencies.
HHS said it made the moves because the public records offices were siloed across the department and did not effectively communicate with each other.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said one of the things that DOGE has uncovered, however, has been the government’s reliance on “archaic computer systems,” and that efforts to modernize FOIA-related systems are not just limited to the adoption of AI.
Daniel Epstein — an associate professor of Law at St. Thomas University College of Law and vice president of the conservative group American First Legal — said AI and other technologies can also help agencies better comply with the Federal Records Act, particularly when it comes to preserving information that can be publicly requested.
“The kind of ironic thing is, having the best technology is not going to be a financial burden on these agencies,” Epstein said. “In many ways, it makes employees more efficient. It makes the processes more efficient.”
