Published: Monday, February 1, 2021 Stack of file folders. Photo credit: Wesley Tingey/Unsplash A new report found the Biden Interior Department has inherited a Freedom of Information Act backlog that's tripled over the last four years. Wesley Tingey/Unsplash The Biden administration's Interior Department leaders face a Freedom of Information Act request backlog that has tripled over the last four years, underscoring the serious public records management challenges ahead. The department's latest quarterly report issued last Friday showed an overall FOIA backlog of 4,265 requests for the period between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, 2020. For the comparable three-month period in late 2016, at the end of the Obama administration, Interior's FOIA backlog stood at 1,364.