Clarity
Good requests identify existing records in terms a custodian can act on.
Our mission
Make public records easier to request—and harder to lose.
FOIAWORKS is Michigan-first software for clearer requests, more visible process, and an organized record of what happened. That's transparency, simplified.
A Michigan origin story
FOIAWORKS is owned and operated by Quagmire Solutions, LLC. It was conceived by a Michigan FOIA attorney and former website designer who saw the same technical and legal failures repeat: public bodies missing or misunderstanding duties under the Act, and requesters submitting questions or broad descriptions that did not identify the records they actually needed.
The answer was not another generic form. It was a guided system built around the lifecycle of a request—from drafting and routing to deadlines, correspondence, production, and storage.
Our purpose
Help more people make focused requests, understand the process, and preserve the public record they receive.
Why access matters
Accessible records are part of good governance.
Public records are the working memory of government. They show how decisions were made, how public money was spent, what information officials considered, and whether adopted policies are producing their intended results. When those records are readily accessible, residents do not have to rely only on summaries, recollections, or official characterizations. They can examine the underlying material and participate in public life on a more informed basis.
Timeliness is essential. A record disclosed only after a vote, an election, a budget decision, or a matter of public concern has passed may retain historical value, but much of its practical value can be lost. Meaningful transparency therefore requires more than eventual disclosure. It requires systems and practices capable of delivering public information while that information can still inform reporting, debate, oversight, and civic action.
Reliable access also improves government itself. Clear records and orderly disclosure practices help public bodies explain their work, preserve institutional knowledge, identify mistakes, and demonstrate that decisions were made for legitimate reasons. Transparency can correct misinformation, reveal where improvement is needed, and distinguish a genuine policy disagreement from a failure of process.
Good governance does not depend on treating every request as a confrontation. Most requesters simply want to understand what happened, verify a fact, research a public issue, or obtain a record that affects them. A process that helps requesters describe records clearly—and helps public bodies respond efficiently—reduces unnecessary friction for everyone.
Public confidence is difficult to demand and easy to lose. It grows when government can show its work and when members of the public can obtain records through a process that is understandable, timely, and consistent. FOIAWORKS exists to help make that form of practical transparency easier to achieve and easier to preserve.
Records as public infrastructure
Transparency should be usable, not merely theoretical.
A legal right of access has limited value when exercising it requires specialized knowledge, uncertain routing, repeated follow-up, and a personal system for reconstructing what happened. The practical experience of requesting records matters. People should be able to identify the appropriate public body, describe the records with reasonable precision, preserve proof of submission, and understand the events that follow.
That infrastructure matters because public records are rarely useful in isolation. A contract may lead to invoices, amendments, implementation communications, performance reports, and datasets. A police report may be connected to dispatch audio, video, photographs, policies, and supplemental reports. Each production becomes more valuable when its relationship to the original request and surrounding correspondence remains intact.
Organization also protects against the quiet loss of public information. Download links expire. Email attachments become difficult to locate. Staff members change, websites are redesigned, and institutional memory fades. A durable matter history preserves not only the responsive files but the context necessary to understand what those files represent, when they were produced, and what may still be missing.
FOIAWORKS approaches transparency as working civic infrastructure: a repeatable system that makes access easier to use, easier to manage, and easier to carry forward. The goal is not simply to generate more requests. It is to help produce clearer requests, more orderly responses, and public records that remain available for meaningful use.
Better process on both sides
Clarity and accountability reinforce each other.
Requesters and public bodies often encounter the same underlying problem from different directions: uncertainty. A requester may not know which office holds a record or how the government describes it. A FOIA coordinator may receive a broad narrative that does not identify an existing record set. The result can be clarification exchanges, larger searches, higher fees, slower production, and frustration that was avoidable from the beginning.
Better request preparation can reduce that friction. Useful date ranges, record categories, custodians, subjects, and preferred electronic formats give the public body a more workable starting point. Clearer requests do not surrender the requester’s rights; they make the desired records easier to recognize and the response easier to evaluate.
Visible process matters just as much after submission. Deadlines, extensions, fee estimates, deposits, partial productions, denials, and promised completion dates should not disappear into scattered messages. When those events are organized into a single history, requesters can follow the matter more intelligently and public bodies can communicate their work more clearly.
This is the balance FOIAWORKS is designed to support. Transparency requires meaningful accountability, but accountability is strongest when the process is accurate, organized, and fair. A system that makes good requests easier and preserves the complete response can serve residents, journalists, researchers, businesses, lawyers, and government professionals at the same time.
Principles that guide the work
Accountability
Dates, responses, fees, productions, and follow-up belong in a visible timeline.
Durability
Responsive records should remain organized and retrievable over the long term, subject to account and plan terms.
Timeliness
Public information is most valuable when it arrives while people can still use it to understand, report, decide, or act.
Usability
Records should remain connected to the request, correspondence, and context that explain what they mean.
Independence
FOIAWORKS is a software and information service of Quagmire Solutions LLC. It is not a law firm and does not provide legal representation.
A better request starts here