The author was involved and knowledgeable in the FOIA processes that existed, and had an understanding of navigating a quagmire of redundant government employees. A cost-reducing restructuring has been going on that seems to funnel all requests to a single place, the "Federal FOIA Portal". Once they submitted to the portal, their request was confirmed as entered. They also had an issue with the new portal, submitted the error, and it was escalated and fixed.

This article could just as well been written as "New FOIA Portal: Streamlined, but Still a Few Bumps".

No, it could not have been titled that. There's no streamlining, there's only bumps. Not a "few" bumps.

This is just pure mismanagement, a massive reduction in following of the law, for no apparent cost savings at all. Firing people, paying their severance, and replacing them with more expensive options is actually a cost increase.

> At the end of the 2025 fiscal year, over 1,600 FOIA requests were still in OPM’s backlog, seven times more than at the end of fiscal year 2024. The average processing time for a simple request at the agency slipped to over 84 days — twice as long as the year before.

Efficiency manifest.