The intelligence community’s inspector general has called on the Defense Intelligence Agency‘s leadership to formulate a plan to reduce its backlog of Freedom of Information Act requests.In September, the ICIG explained in a report that an FOIA request is considered part of an agency’s backlog when it remains unprocessed after 20 working days, or 30 days in special circumstances.
As of fiscal year 2017, the DIA had a backlog of 1,136 requests, the report stated. The agency attributed the issue, in part, to a loss of contractors in 2015.
Agencies with backlogs as high as 1K cases are required to have a formal plan to resolve the requests, but the inspector general learned that the DIA did not have one. The oversight office said that, without such a plan in place, “[the] DIA is unlikely to see sustained progress with backlog reduction.â€
The ICIG recommended the DIA develop and implement a backlog reduction plan as soon as possible, to which the agency agreed.
