For more than a month, we’ve been watching our 64 federal agencies battle to #releasetherecords on their FOIA office employee counts, funding numbers, and the frequency with which they impose fees upon the various categories of records requester.

On Monday, we announced the winner of our special Department of Interior Exhibition bracket, and today, we’ve got big, big news. It was a nailbiter at (Adm)in It To Win It, so very close amongst the (Common) Good Sports, surprisingly active in The Protection (B)racket, and time sensitive when it came to Workers’ Comp(etition).

Take a look through the requests to learn more about how agencies responded and take a look below to see who has made it to the

#FOInalFOUR

FOIA March Madness 2019 Final Four

(Adm)in It To Win It

(Common) Good Sport

The Protection (B)racket

Workers’ Comp(etition)

The Exhibition Bracket

Earlier this week, we announced the National Parks Service FOIA office as our particularly tenacious winner of the Exhibition bracket. Its team, led by Charis Wilson, returned a collection of records within a week of our initial request, including spreadsheets of FOIA costs, fee waivers, and requester classifications.

Like many other agencies competing, NPS returned no clear compilation of employees tasked to FOIA responsibilities, because, according to Wilson, “the National Park Service program is decentralized and “costs” are paid by park, regional, and program offices out of their base funding. Subsequently, there is no line item for FOIA costs or budget data.”

The NPS win in the 13-team bracket resulted in 13 audience winners, who had all predicted that the lead of our nation’s federal lands would do double-duty as its FOIA frontrunner.

Tune back in to find out how many pages our agencies had released by the 20-day deadline and find out who will be finishing up in the top spot in this year’s FOIA March Madness 2019.

Image via Wikimedia Commons