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A few years ago, Steve Ballmer began to take an interest in the world of government data. The former Microsoft CEO -- whose estimated net worth is just shy of $38 billion -- and his wife Connie wanted to be more deeply involved in public-sector philanthropy, and Ballmer wanted to know what government did with the money it raised. Where did it go, who did it serve and what outcomes did it get? He quickly discovered that such basic questions were hard to answer. So Ballmer set out to change that. The result of his efforts is USAFacts, a comprehensive website that Freakonomics Radio called “a sort of fiscal colonoscopy of the American government.” The initiative includes economists and researchers and partners like the Penn Wharton Budget Model from the University of Pennsylvania, the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and Lynchburg College
Governing
The use of FOIA has dramatically increased in the first year of the Trump administration. Requests for government records, including letters, speeches, notes about meetings, appointment calendars, memoranda and emails rose to a record-setting 823,000 in Fiscal Year 2017, an increase of over 30,000 in one combative year. Government efforts to withhold records and government censorship (known as “redaction”) rose even faster. According to a recent Associated Press report, 78 percent of all citizen and press requests for records resulted in documents that were censored (often heavily), or no documents produced at all. In almost one-third of government-wide cases of internal agency appeals due to denials or partial responses (FOIA requires such administrative appeals before a lawsuit) agencies backed down and found the files.
The Baltimore Sun
West Virginia student journalists are still being given the runaround when they request arrest and incident reports that are considered public information under West Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act, the state’s Sunshine Law. While the Morgantown police no longer keep arrest and incident reports bound in a paper docket, copies of the electronic documents should be available to anyone who requests them, according to Patrick McGinley, a professor of law at West Virginia University and an expert on the state’s Freedom of Information Act. This spring, students trying to obtain such electronic reports were told they had to get the public records they wanted from the magistrate or circuit courts, even though the police are bound by law to provide copies of arrest and incident reports to journalists and ordinary citizens. Other students were told they would be charged for a copy of one or two arrest reports, even though West Virginia FOIA law stipulates that copies should be free as long as they don’t take up extra “man-hours.” The law also allows government agencies to waive copying costs when the requests come from legitimate members of the press.
Charleston Gazette-Mail
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 "USAFacts, a comprehensive website that Freakonomics Radio called 'a sort of fiscal colonoscopy of the American government.'"
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