The Department of Homeland Security and one of its busiest components, Citizenship and Immigration Services, both say they’ve made notable progress on their Freedom of Information Act backlogs this year, even though they’re fielding more requests than ever.
But, like many aspects of the department, various components have their own disparate approaches, and processing and tracking systems, to handle incoming FOIA requests. A departmentwide approach, which the Government Accountability Office said is key to DHS’ attempts to address its FOIA backlog, isn’t finished yet.
Citizenship and Immigration Services attributes its success — a 64% drop in its FOIA backlog in 2019 — to its new FOIA tracking and processing system, called the Freedom of Information Act Record System (FIRST).