Agency Contact Information
**To see which agencies still have COVID-related notices, please check the UPDATES tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet.**
After drafting a FOIA or MDR request, the next step is submitting the request to the agency or component most likely to have the documents you seek. While the Department of State (DOS) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have centralized FOIA offices, the military branches have individual FOIA offices and may have a different office for processing MDR requests. Contacting the main FOIA office to determine the location of records can help save time (weeks, months, or even years) in referrals.
Once you determine where to send your request, the next step is figuring out how to send it. The ways that a request can be submitted vary from agency to agency. All agencies accept FOIA or MDR requests sent by postal mail. A few agencies accept fax submissions. Several agencies prefer email submissions.
Many agencies have transitioned to portals, such as a Public Access Link (FOIAXpress) or SecureRelease (Deloitte). These portals require a user account, a login, and password and you may need a separate account for each agency that has its own portal.
Finally, a majority of agencies participate in FOIA.gov, the government's central website for FOIA. This website does not require a user account. However, some agencies may automatically create an account for a requester in their agency portal when a request is submitted through FOIA.gov.
The information for where and how to submit a request is not always clear and sometimes details conflict. With this page, we hope to create a little order out of the confusion by providing the most recent address and submission information for some of the top agencies and their components.
The page will be updated periodically and more agencies will be added as we confirm their contact information.
Happy Filing!