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Now that the old FOIA website has shut down, is it impossible to run a simple keyword search to see what FOIA requests have been submitted regarding a certain topic? I don't even see agency-specific search tools (e.g. an EPA FOIA tool). Am I missing something?

EDIT: We used to be able to search by date, agency, keyword. This new site seems like a huge step backwards for transparency in America - you get like five results

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    I’m voting to close this question because it is not a question about the law.
    – bdb484
    Commented Dec 26, 2023 at 19:01

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New website, new look

Just by going to the old website, you are told to "Please submit your FOIA request at FOIA.gov or contact the agency directly."

https://www.foia.gov/ does perfectly work, has all the information you need to file, the proper forms, has a search tool and a lot of reports - you can compile data lists even online with them!

Using the search wizard with "FBI arrest data" I was pointed to the agencies that might hold those, and other government sites that might contain them.

Using the annual data, I Could easily see that in 2022 the FBI had received 18056 requests, had a backlog of 7373 requests, and handled 18350 requests. This lead to 7079 requests going into the 2023 backlog.

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  • Basic searches don't seem to work though. The vast majority of FOIA requests are not included in this new search tool?
    – user3807846
    Commented Dec 26, 2023 at 12:44
  • We used to be able to search by date, agency, keyword. This new site seems like a huge step backwards for transparency - you get like five results.
    – user3807846
    Commented Dec 26, 2023 at 12:50
  • Unfortunately, I think the answer is you can't actually search like you once could. If I run 'fbi arrest data' in the old search tool I could get thousands of individual foia results and open each and every one of them. Now we get a handful and a link to the fbi's foia. But with epa searches, the epa doesn't let you see individual ones for example. So if anyone's looking into this same question in the future, the answer is FOIA search has been handicapped.
    – user3807846
    Commented Dec 26, 2023 at 20:26

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