Navigating FOIA: OPM Website Issues and Delays in Data Requests

This article details issues with the OPM website and its impact on FOIA requests. The author experienced prolonged delays and website errors, highlighting a broader trend of increasing processing times and staff reductions in government information management.

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Challenges in Submitting FOIA Requests

The declaration noted accessibility to the portal was restored on July 23, and that the concern did not protect against OPM from receiving FOIA demands with alternating entry methods. The firm stated that “there is no evidence that customer data was accessed, shed, or endangered” and that the issue was separated to OPM’s site.

On July 23, 13 days after I had actually filed the support ticket with Opexus, I obtained another reaction asking me once again what mistake I was obtaining. I informed them I was still obtaining the very same message. A couple of hours later on, I tried logging back in. The site was repaired.

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OPM’s Website Outage and Support

I saw my records demands were taking longer, and they were progressively steered towards web sites. Such held true in very early July, when I attempted to send a request to OPM for human resources information. When I clicked “visit,” I was confronted with a message reading, “Something went wrong while refining your action. Please get in touch with [e-mail shielded] for support if the trouble persists.”.

Much of that information was sourced from the Workplace of Personnel Administration, which keeps a chest of info concerning that operates in the federal government. However that firm’s FOIA department was thrown into chaos as Elon Musk’s Division of Federal government Effectiveness extended across federal companies to cut workers in very early 2025.

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Impact of Staff Reductions on FOIA Processing

I file a great deal of Flexibility of Information Act requests. I’ve been requesting personnel lists from both Trump managements, and I have tracked thousands of federal political appointees in order to publish financial disclosures in searchabledatabases.

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Below’s exactly how the procedure operated at most companies before the Trump management and DOGE destroyed the offices that took care of these demands: You would send a basic email with a message description of the files you desire. That’s it.

The declaration noted access to the website was brought back on July 23, and that the problem did not avoid OPM from receiving FOIA requests with alternative submission approaches.

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The Evolving FOIA Process

Prevented by the absence of response from the agency itself, I reached out to Opexus support, describing that I was a FOIA requester and that the OPM site wasn’t functioning. I obtained a response from somebody named Stephen, stating, “I have intensified this problem to our engineering team.” When I adhered to up a few days later, Stephen stated, “I have recognized the origin of the concern and am presently dealing with the OPM administrator to implement the necessary fix.” More concerns on the assistance ticket thread weren’t answered.

So I did. I instantly obtained one more automated message. This set informed me to send my demand to the National FOIA Website, a cross-government website that allows you to submit a FOIA request to any kind of agency.

I observed my records requests were taking longer, and they were significantly steered towards internet portals. Such was the situation in early July, when I tried to send a request to OPM for human sources information. OPM’s internet site still provided get in touch with information for a FOIA public intermediary, a person that is intended to assist the public comprehend the documents procedure and aid with demands. This one informed me to send my request to the National FOIA Site, a cross-government website that permits you to submit a FOIA demand to any company.

OPM’s site still listed get in touch with details for a FOIA public intermediary, someone that is supposed to help the public comprehend the records procedure and aid with demands. When I emailed the address, I obtained an automatic action reading, “I am no longer at OPM. Please get in touch with [you need help with a FOIA matter email safeguarded]”.

According to OPM data, more than 600 government information experts (staffers who administer FOIA and the Privacy Act) have actually resigned or been terminated because the beginning of the second Trump management. Within OPM itself, 12 info specialists left, seven of whom were given up. (There was one brand-new hire because amount of time.).

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Obtaining documents from the firm has because become an increasingly Kafkaesque process, one that in early July of this year jumped me between 3 different seemingly deserted email inboxes and two web sites. In addition to the fact that my once-routine requests currently suffer for months, just requesting for files has actually become its very own sort of shell game.

At the end of the 2025 , over 1,600 FOIA demands were still in OPM’s stockpile, 7 times greater than at the end of fiscal year 2024. The ordinary processing time for a straightforward demand at the agency slid to over 84 days– twice as long as the year before.