Databases and Open Government Resources: Skip the FOIA, February 11, 2011

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Databases and Open Government Resources: Skip the FOIA

12 contributors

• Cost of state transparency websites

Links

• Keep electronic communications open. Emails and Open Records in Wisconsin.
• State of California. Praise for CA.gov.
• Virginia House tightens violations to state’s FOIA laws.

Resources

• GuideStar. Contains tax information for non profits.
• The Robots META Tag Values. Robot/indexing contract/ understanding is explained.
• VM NewsFlash 2/11/2011. A weekly collection of open government links.
• Computer-Assisted Investigative Reporting - Materials Heritage 's CAIR reporter training provides several helpful resources.
• The Influence Explorer from the Sunlight Foundation. Type in the name of a company, your lawmaker or a prominent individual, and see how they're influencing the political system.

FOIA resources

• Suits & Sentences is a legal affairs blog and the author is a FOIA expert.
• The FOIA blog.
• FOIA Friday index.

Census info

• 2010 Census Data Products: United States. Census Data release calendar.
• Detailed 2010 Census data for Iowa released.
• U.S. Census Bureau - New on Site.The census released data several states AR, IN, VT, IA recently.

Federal resources

• Information on tracking stimulus spending: Subsidyscope.org, stimuluswatch.org, and recovery.gov
• Energy.gov Open Government Initiative. The federal Deparment of Energy provides high value datasets, including oilspill data.
• The Federal Contractor Misconduct database.
• The National Security Archive. Hosted by the George Washington University.

State resources

• Lost money, by state. Money states have lost during the past 20 years because of earmarks not spent.
• Office of the Utah State Auditor - Utah's Local Governments' Reports. Local governments in Utah report their finances to state website.
• Bureau of Labor Statistics Data. Bureau of Labor Statistics has data on states' workforce.
• American Fact Finder. Population, housing, economic, and geographic data.
• Missouri Accountability Portal.
• Campaign Reporting. Albuquerque, NM provides raw data and multiple ways to download it
• National Assessment of Educational Progress data explorer. Includes state-level data.
• Maine.gov contains a transparency section that details how government money is spent. The DataShare portal provides access to public information.
• City of Ann Arbor data sets. Dozens of Ann Arbor city databases.

Tips

• The Utah legislature has audio of hearings and floor archived.
• Data.gov allows user-submitted apps. Promotes innovation and creativity.
• The Sunlight Foundation found errors on usaspending.gov and @Watchdogorg found errors on recovery.gov back in November 2009.
• Utah has open meeting site pmn.utah.gov. Some counties have searchable property and ownership data online.
• Cook County, Illinois last year made its check registry available, which lets you see who's getting paid for what.