IASSIST 2006: Data in a world of Networked Knowledge May 23-26, Ann Arbor, Michigan Delivering Government Data to Lawyers and Journalists Susan Long Linda Roberge Syracuse University Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

IASSIST 2006 Agenda  Our Center in Brief  Our Users and their Needs  Problems and Solutions

IASSIST 2006 Our Center in Brief  Where does our data come from?  Use FOIA to obtain release of info from federal administrative databases tracking govt’s own activities  Create databases: document, validate and supplement, combine sources, build indices

IASSIST 2006 Our Center in Brief  How is data delivered to users?  develop reports and deliver on web  data mining tools and data warehouse for users to access our data  Center is self-supporting  free public web site  subscription service: data mining

IASSIST 2006 TRACFED Criminal Civil Administrative People Money Context RAWDATARAWDATA Find Get Clean Validate Enhance Organize Load OUTPUTOUTPUT STORED DYNAMIC Reports Tables Graphs Maps Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

IASSIST 2006 Evolution in TRAC’s Delivery  Pre-web (18 years ago)  Web – stored pages (12 years ago)  Web – dynamic, database driven content delivery (past 10 years)

IASSIST 2006 TRAC’s Users  Media  Lawyers  Libraries  Academic  Government  Public Interest Groups  Public at large

IASSIST 2006 Challenge: D iverse User Needs  Wide variety in data sophistication  Varying knowledge about government  Breadth vs. Depth  Specificity of information required  Unstructured vs. structured questions  Data mining for non-statisticians

IASSIST 2006 Aides to Understanding: The Basics  Carefully designed tables  Strategic use of graphics  Access to underlying data

IASSIST 2006 Tables Dynamic  Stored 

IASSIST 2006 Graphs  Dynamic  Stored

IASSIST 2006 Listings: The underlying data

IASSIST 2006 Maps  Dynamic  Stored

IASSIST 2006 Problems and Solutions  Online help  Data Search  Report Generation

IASSIST 2006 Online Help: Need for movement animated gifs

IASSIST 2006 Online Help: Need for movement express_allrank.html tutorial movies (express)

IASSIST 2006 Online Help: Need for movement stf_godeep_current.html tutorial movies (drill down)

IASSIST 2006 Online Help: Experimenting with voice houston_example.html

IASSIST 2006 Data Search Can you search numbers the way you would text ala the “Google” model?

IASSIST 2006 Data Search  Do we have any data?  Where can you find it?  How can you get to it?

IASSIST 2006

Report Generation

IASSIST 2006 Concluding Remarks  It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, )  It is our job to make data usable by those who theorize, especially the journalists, lawyers, and policy makers.