Analyzing Albany's FOIL Request Responsiveness

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"The City of Albany complies with New York State Freedom of Information Law (FOIL), providing transparency with its legislative actions, and providing the public with access to its government records. By Common Council Ordinance, FOIL requests are accepted by the City Clerk-Albany's official keeper of government records and designated Records Access Officer (RAO). "

- City of Albany Website

Albany Data Stories relies on the availability of public records to analyze the City and its operations.  We find some public records that we need are proactively pushed to the public on the City's open data website; for the majority of data we are required to file a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request to receive information that we need to tell a more complete story. 

As we’ve filed FOIL requests with the city of Albany (and others) we have received every imaginable outcome, i.e. approved, approved but delayed, denial, denial followed up with appeals, incorrect information, etc.   For example, as of this writing (12/11/2025) we have open FOIL requests for audit reports and vendor spending data.  We have an FOIL appeal regarding documents associated with the distribution of American Rescue Plan Act funds.  

The purpose of this article is to examine all FOIL requests from 2015 to present to understand the trend and patterns of requests, types of responses, and individual department responsiveness. 

The primary reason we have filed FOIL requests for public records is to independently verify decisions and actions by local municipal governments . Government agencies and officials use data to:

• Make policy decisions that impact their constituents.
• Cite numbers, i.e., crime is going down, tax revenue has increased, etc.

However, the public often does not have access to the underlying records used to draw those conclusions.  Examining the underlying data is crucially important to replicate the analysis that tour government performs, to promote transparency, to hold public officials accountable for their actions, and to assist research and spark innovation.

Before jumping into the analysis, we will define terms that are used in this and in other stories on ADS. First, when we file a FOIL request, it’s for public records. Public records typically come in two varieties: “Data”, which pertains to vendor lists, tax rolls, revenue, etc., and “Discovery”, which for example, can be email exchanges. A majority of our FOIL requests have been for Data, which have helped us to plot trends and overlay heatmaps with crime records, analysis of speed camera data and project revenue, etc. 

For this FOIL we wanted the Data regarding the timing, quantity, and number of approved and denied. We FOIL requested all information on FOILs requests received by the city from January 1st, 2015 through May 23rd, 2025 (the date of the FOIL request); the request included 3 components:

1. Summary Data: Total number of FOIL requests submitted. Total number of FOIL requests denied. Total number of FOIL appeals filed. Total number of denials overturned on appeal. 
2. Request-Level Data: A record of each FOIL request submitted during that time period, including the following fields (if available): Type of Information Requested Subcategory Description (labeled: "Describe the document(s) you are requesting. I am requesting the following document(s)") Is this a Media Request Was the FOIL approved or denied Was the FOIL appealed Was the appeal overturned 
3. Format and Delivery If fields are missing or not tracked, explain why they are not tracked and they may be excluded

The only information provided to us from our FOIL request was #1. That data contained information on FOILs submitted through the provision of data, July 25th, 2025. Information regarding the nature of the FOIL requests (#2) and the mode of delivery were not provided (#3).

We start with a high level summary of the FOIL requests, provided in the table below.  There are four outcomes for any FOIL.  The table below lists the frequency and median days open for each of the four outcomes.  

We analyzed the median days rather than average because the distribution of Days Open does not follow a normal distribution. Also, we interpret Days Open as the number of days, including weekends, that a FOIL request was open for. As an example, we submitted our FOIL request for FOIL data, W024692-052325, May 23rd and the City delivered the data on July 25th (63 days).

The four FOIL outcomes include:

• Approved - FOIL requests that were marked Completed, Full Release, Partial Release, and Waiting for Pick-up.
• Denied - FOIL requests that were marked Denied and Exemption Denial.
• Approved after Appeal - FOIL requests that were marked Appeal Overturned.
• Denied After Appeal - FOIL requests that were marked Appeal Upheld.

There are also FOIL requests marked as ‘Not FOIL’ (70), ‘Withdrawn’ (68), and ‘Assigned’ (119). 

In the table below Approved FOIL requests typically take 23 days and Denied requests are resolved more quickly (17 days). Although a small sample size, Appeals -take much longer, approximately 4x longer. 

With 10 years of FOIL data we can understand the trend in FOIL volume and responsiveness.  In the chart above we plot the number of FOIL requests per year (bar chart) and the median number of days (line and points) needed for those FOIL requests to be resolved.  

One key takeaway from this graph is that the total number of FOIL requests received by the city of Albany has readily increased. FOIL volume increased nearly 100%, between 2015 and 2024, from 1,292 to 2,574.   Over the same time period the median number of days for FOIL request resolution has materially increased slightly, from approximately 15 days in 2015 and 2016 to over 25 days for 2022 through 2024. 

Note, for completeness we show 2025 although this data only covers the first 7 months of the year.  If the trend of 2025 FOIL requests remains roughly constant, we expect that the 2025 request volume will exceed 2024 totals of 2,574 FOIL requests.  

In the FOIL data provided by the City approximately 1300 requests were listed as ‘New Requests’, which we did not include in any of our analysis throughout this article.   The median open time period of New Requests was 18.1 days. 

The FOIL data that we received includes information on the City Department that responded to the FOIL.  As we analyze responsiveness by department, it is clear that not all departments handle the same volume of FOIL requests, and that the time required to respond to each FOIL request with either an approval or dental varies greatly.   We expect that this is a function of one or more of three factors - 1) the complexity of the FOIL request, 2) the priority that the department gives to FOIL responses, and 3) the bandwidth of the department. 

In the chart above we plot, for each department, the number of requests and the median time to respond to Approved requests.  Note that both the x-axis (Number of FOIL requests) and y-axis (Median Days Open) are log scales, which is better for visualizing data that varies by several orders of magnitude.

Even within most departments the time required to respond to both approved FOIL requests varies greatly.   We refrain from drawing any trends for departments with less than ~10 approved FOIL requests because there are not enough cases to draw meaningful conclusions.  For departments with more than ten FOIL requests, most hovered between 20 - 40 days open, with the exception being the Water Department, which had a median value of 3.8 days to close 263 approved FOIL requests.   

Another way of looking at this data is through the bar chart provided below. The chart displays the total number of requests and the median amount of time it takes for a department to respond to approved FOIL requests are displayed both in the height of the bar and the number on top in black. Note that the y-axis is a log scale. 

The data hints at the large variation in time that one could expect when they file a FOIL requests; however, most of the larger Days Open are associated with departments that processed very few approved FOILs. We also note that there is no data to directly compare the effort each agency needed to collect and disseminate the information associated with each FOIL request, making comparison between agencies more difficult. 

For example, the 1353 days (approximately 3 years and 8 months) needed for the Albany Housing Authority to provide information for its singular “Approved” FOIL request cannot be directly compared to a median of 11 days needed by Special Events, which had a total of four approved FOIL requests during the same span. Larger agencies that handle and process many FOIL requests weigh heavily on the median value, such as City Clerk (12171), Water Department (263), Law Dept. (180), and Site Administrator (272).

Lastly, we analyzed the ratio of FOIL approval-to-denial by department against each department's FOIL volume for all requests.  In the chart above the y-axis is the ratio of approval to denial on a log scale.  The x-axis is the volume of FOIL requests on a log scale.  Departments with points above the dashed line have approve more FOIL requests than they deny. 

The purpose of this analysis was to understand if the volume of FOILs that a department responded to, or the nature of a department's FOILs would suggest a particularly high or low approval-to-denial ratio.  We find this chart interesting however we don't draw any specific conclusions from it.

From our analysis of the City of Albany's FOIL data from 2015 through 2025 we can make several conclusions. 

1. The city has seen a steady increase in FOIL requests with nearly a 100% increase in volume from 2015 to 2024.  
2. The median time to resolve FOIL requests has also increased in this same span of time. 
3. The median days open for approved and denied FOIL requests varies slightly, at 23 and 17 days respecitvely, respectively
4. The volume and disposition of FOIL requests by department varies significantly

New York State Freedom of Information Law, Article 6 (Section 84-90) says "Each entity subject to the provisions of this article, within five business days of the receipt of a written request for a record reasonably described, shall make such record available to the person requesting it, deny such request in writing or furnish a written acknowledgment of the receipt of such request and a statement of the approximate date, which shall be reasonable under the circumstances of the request, when such request will be granted or denied"

We did not examine the City of Albany's FOIL responsiveness against New York State law, however it is clear that a material amount of FOIL requests and FOIL appeals do not receive the required responsiveness from the City - in time or in communication.