For the first time in over a decade, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) celebrated Sunshine Week with a blog post, instead of a public event. In past years, a high-ranking DOJ official — often the DOJ Chief FOIA Officer – would make a speech, followed by the Director of the Office of Information Policy (OIP).
The OIP director would make a presentation about the state of FOIA compliance across the executive branch, backed by data they’d collected from the annual reports agencies were required to submit.
And then the OIP Director would give out awards to the FOIA professionals across the executive branch, offering important public recognition for their service. (I know, because I have attended most of these events since 2016 at “Main Justice” in downtown DC.)
In 2026, there was no public ceremony or speeches, nor has OIP published and socialized open data that shows the state of agency compliance with the statutory obligation to respond to FOIA requests within 20 days that Congress has repeatedly mandated.
Instead, OIP published a short statement by Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward, Chief FOIA Officer of the Department of Justice, atop a short blog post about Sunshine Week by Office of Information Policy Director Sean Glendening.
To be clear, we vigorously agree with AAG Woodward that “our FOIA professionals are the unsung heroes of democracy” and welcome the Department honoring their service. Unfortunately, the Department of Justice also made several false assertions in his short statement to the American people that require correction.
1) This is not “the most transparent Department of Justice in our nation’s history,” by any objective measure. Any subjective assessment that ignores the contempt the USAG has shown towards Congress and the free press or the stonewalling around the Epstein Files isn’t honest.
2) Prior administrations made real progress in “improving FOIA processes and prioritizing citizens’ access to information about their government” by proactively disclosing data online. This administration has not.
They’ve gutted FOIA offices, taken down public data and fired statistical officials, and stonewalled requestors, the direct result of which is more litigation and wasted taxpayer funds. It is downright Orwellian to state the inverse is true on a Department of Justice website during Sunshine Week. Doing so may even run afoul of the Information Quality Act, which requires officials to ensure “the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information (including statistical information) disseminated by Federal agencies.”
3) The “ever-increasing burden” placed on FOIA professionals is the result of multiple administrations failing to invest far more in the FOIA, from modernization, increasing state capacity, carving out dedicated, secure alternatives for first-party records access to veterans and people seeking immigration records, to proactively disclosing records corporations are buying under the FOIA and other frequently requested records.
The need for systemic investment in improving the systemic problems that have made FOIA broken for people unwilling or unable to file lawsuits for access to information has been abundantly clear for decades. The American people can see this truth for themselves in the breadth and depth of recommendations made by the U.S. Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee, or experience it by making a FOIA request through FOIA.gov.
As Nate Jones reported for the Washington Post, instead of “improving FOIA processes” as DOJ falsely claimed, this administration cut FOIA staff. That predictably has negatively affected the capacity of agencies to respond to requestors quickly – much less provide records responsive under the FOIA in a timely manner.
In his first public post about FOIA, the new OIP director did not recognize any of those facts, nor offer any thanks to the FOIA staff dismissed and honor their service — including his predecessor.
Instead, he and the AAG chose to try to create an “alternative fact” during a national celebration of public access to information.
Namely, they’re advancing a narrative in which “a small group of frequent requesters accounts for an increasing volume of both total and complex FOIA requests” – without showing any data to back up this claim. In this alternative narrative, this “forces agencies to divert a disproportionate share of limited resources away from the timely processing of simpler requests submitted by individual members of the public.”
Got it? Increased secrecy, censorship of open data, legacy systems, diminished state capacity, lax Congressional oversight, malign negligence by OMB, firing the AOTUS, and serial underfunding for decades aren’t at fault for the increasingly poor performance by FOIA offices. Instead, it’s a “small group of requestors” that’s “forcing” agencies to divert “limited resources.” That’s transparently misleading.
As it does every year, OIP quoted James Madison, who famously stated “[a] popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps, both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
That’s more true than ever in 2026.
Thank you to the dedicated FOIA professionals and everyone else in and outside of government who continues to arm the American with the self-knowledge required for self-governance – including about the true state of the administration of the Freedom of Information Act and public access to the public records we all pay for with our taxpayer dollars.
E Pluribus Unum 