It’s Monday in America again, and just four weeks ago, FOIA officers awoke to find fresh requests from MuckRock and the chance to become the champion of the greatest basketball/bureaucracy crossover event to ever hit the World Wide Web: FOIA March Madness 2019.
We asked 64 federal agencies to process the same request, a five-part inquiry into the people and payments that make the each one of their FOIA offices go. We asked you, our readers, to place your bets on which center of civil servitude would be the best at getting us what we wanted. And, today, we have the first round of winners to announce.
The Exhibition Bracket
New this year is the Exhibition Bracket competition, which we limited to just agencies of the Department of the Interior.
We’ve had four agencies claim to complete the challenge within the allotted 20 days, but only one was able to do it with the speed needed to take the top spot, the only agency to get us a FOIA March Madness response in March.
And the agency who can claim to be the swiftest in the Interior:
Honorable mentions:
Congratulations to our many clever audience members who guessed correctly, including AdrianBlanco, AllieSchmidt, ArmyFOIAer, ColinSmith, James Jacobs, JaymeKFraser, JohnMozena, KaitlinGillespie, KatieSuiters, Robert Vale, StephanieZepelin, SteveRhodes, and SydneyB.
Bracket Finals
In our main competition, we’ve reached the bracket finals, folks, and it’s a tight competition. Take a look at the brackets below to see which agencies are still in the running for the title of FOIA March Madness 2019’s Most Responsive Agency.
(Adm)in It To Win It
(Common) Good Sports
The Protection (B)racket
Workers’ Comp(etition)
Coming Up
We’re still tallying up the total released documents so far and working with our remaining agencies to get the rest of the relevant materials released. Check back next week to find out which audience members most accurately guessed the number of pages released so far and learn which agencies are making it to the Final Four.
