I file a lot of FOIA requests, tracking thousands of federal appointees. Since DOGE under Elon Musk fanned out across agencies in early 2025, OPM's FOIA department has been thrown into chaos. Over 600 government information specialists have resigned or been fired; at OPM, 12 left, seven laid off. The process was once simple—an email. Now it's Kafkaesque.

In early July, I tried to use the portal run by Opexus (formerly AINS), which has received over $50 million in federal contracts. I got an error. Emails bounced between abandoned inboxes. The former FOIA specialist told me cuts made the office less efficient, threatening statutory compliance. At fiscal year-end, 1,600 FOIA requests were backlogged—seven times more than the year prior—and average processing time for simple requests hit 84 days, double the previous year.

After contacting Opexus support, Stephen said the issue was escalated. It took 13 days to fix. Opexus said the issue did not prevent alternate submissions and no data was compromised. OPM did not respond. I'm still waiting for my records.