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. Indeed, I noticed my records requests were taking longer, and they were increasingly steered toward web portals. On its website, Opexus claims to process FOIA requests for 80% of federal institutions. This one told me to submit my request to the National FOIA Portal, a cross-government site that allows you to submit a FOIA request to any agency. The statement noted access to the portal was restored on July 23, and that the issue did not prevent OPM from receiving FOIA requests through alternate submission methods.