Projects

Good Questions

April 2016 Projects

Budgets vs. Request Processes

Molly Kraus (@mollyjkraus) and Michael Kenney (@mleekenney)

Department Scorecard

Clint Adams (@clinteroni), Andrew Tran (@abtran), Kai Teoh (@jkteoh), Hanna Wallach (@hannawallach)

Possibly accessible as a Slackbot? I want to FOIA {dept} about {topic} -- and it will point you to a public facing record on MuckRock.

Does Mandatory Attorney Fee Reimbursement make FOIA requests more effective?

Dominic Mauro (@mynameisdom), Geoffrey Yip (@geoffreyyip), Kate Fink (@katherinefink)

In 21 States, filing an FOIA lawsuit and winning in court entitles you to mandatory attorney's fee reimbursement. Fee reimbursements are deducted from the non-compliant agency's budget. We hypothesize that government agencies at the state level will be more responsive to FOIA requests when there is the threat of a large non-compliance fee.

How do academic researchers use FOIA?

Do people really FOIA emails? Has there been a measurable uptick in that? Kelsey Kennedy (@kelseyrkennedy), Peter Hess (@PeterNHess)

What sorts of files do agencies provide?

@jsvine and anyone else interested. Some questions:

• What are the popular file formats?
• Are some agencies better at providing native data formats?

Compare and contrast between FBI requests V/S other popular areas of interest since 2010

Ashesha Mehrotra (@ashesha20), Poroma Pant (@poroma9215), Dylan Portelance (@portelance)

• How does the general news coverage match with requests filled under the most popular areas?

How concentrated are FOIA requests by individual requesters

Max Galka (@galka_max)

Total requests in FOPA Mapper database: 662,492 Requests with name populated: 308,873 Top 100 requesters: 118,642 (38% of total)

• Are these results representative of federal FOIA requests as a whole?