Information, please.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: Department of Homeland Security, Freedom of Information Act requests - Brief article

In 2006, queries to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accounted for nearly half of pending Freedom of Information Act requests. In 2002, by contrast, queries to the department accounted for less than a quarter of total requests. DHS now receives about 100,000 requests annually.

As Americans have gotten better at asking DHS questions, DHS has gotten better--or at least faster--at answering them. According to a March report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, DHS was able to decrease its backlog of overdue requests by 29,972, or about 29 percent, between...