Members of the 2024-2026 FOIA Advisory Committee wrapped up their term July 16, 2026, voting to approve their Final Report and Recommendations which contains 11 previously approved recommendations. Seven of the recommendations are to Congress, while the remaining four are to federal agencies in general, the Chief FOIA Officers Council, the Office of Information Policy and OGIS.
The 11 recommendations—from three subcommittees: Implementation, Statutory Reform, and Volume and Frequency—are:
Recommendation 2026-01: Congress should make the FOIA Advisory Committee a nondiscretionary federal advisory committee
Recommendation 2026-02: FOIA’s affirmative disclosure provisions should mandate the ongoing publication of agency FOIA logs on at least a quarterly basis, unless the agency receives fewer than 100 requests per year in which case it could publish them semiannually. The logs should be posted in machine-readable format and transmitted to the Department of Justice for additional posting on foia.gov. Congress should include an appropriate effective date for this requirement that allows agencies reasonable time for implementation including interim milestones while not unduly delaying compliance.
Recommendation 2026-03: In its annual appropriation language to federal agencies, Congress should require federal agencies to fund their FOIA function at a level sufficient to enable them to fulfill their FOIA requests timely. In determining appropriate funding direction it would provide, Congress should consider an agency’s average workforce size, including any contract staff; changes in the volume and complexity of its requests over the past five years; its average backlog over the past five years; and its operational structure, among other influencing factors.
Recommendation 2026-04: Congress should create new, FOIA-like disclosure laws to ensure public access to records controlled by legislative and judicial branch agencies.
Recommendation 2026-05: Federal agencies should align standard staffing levels and technological resources to meet the increasing levels of FOIA requests by analyzing existing backlogs, the volume and complexity of requests, and the workload assigned to employees. Specifically, agencies should consider the total work that includes requests and backlog and the capacity for employees to respond to these requests.
Recommendation 2026-06: To increase collaboration and connection among federal agency FOIA professionals, the Chief FOIA Officers Council’s Committee on Cross-Agency Collaboration and Innovation’s (COCACI) Resources Working Group, assisted by the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) and the Office of Information Policy (OIP), as appropriate, should establish a process for creating and maintaining small, self-governing cohorts of federal FOIA professionals interested in collaboration, support, and sharing of best practices.
Recommendation 2026-07: In an effort to increase the awareness and adoption of FOIA Advisory Committee recommendations, the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy should require status reporting from agencies on implementation of recommendations, either through questions in annual Chief FOIA Officer reports or through another appropriate publicly available reporting mechanism.
Recommendation 2026-08: To make recommendations more useful to agency FOIA professionals, the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) should create a resource for agency use presenting FOIA Advisory Committee recommendations in an easy-to-access manner, enabling FOIA professionals to quickly identify actionable improvements to their FOIA programs.
Recommendation 2026-09: Congress should create a new “FOIA Court” with specialized jurisdiction over FOIA claims.
Recommendation 2026-10: Congress should amend FOIA’s judicial-review provision: 1) To reaffirm the statute’s de novo standard; and 2) To specify the remedial authority of the courts, including the power to order an agency to comply with its affirmative-disclosure obligations, provided that a requester has exhausted administrative remedies prior to filing suit.
Recommendation 2026-11: Congress should allocate funding to commission a feasibility study to examine the costs and benefits of improving the FOIA support infrastructure to better serve taxpayers, records requesters, and public agencies.
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