FOIA Advisor

FOIA News: FOIA Machine joins MuckRock

FOIA News (2015-2023)Kevin SchmidtComment

FOIA Machine joins MuckRock to make government more open for everyone

By Michael Morisy, MuckRock, Nov. 29, 2016

With fake news seemingly everywhere and government secrecy becoming the norm, public records are more important than ever. To help, I’m pleased to share that FOIA Machine is joining MuckRock. The two sites will continue to operate independently to offer easy, accessible tools to help reporters, researchers, and the general public file, track, and share their public records requests.

Since its successful Kickstarter in 2013, FOIA Machine has helped journalists around the country write and manage their public records requests. It’s been used for projects large and small, and it helped galvanize the interest of thousands of users.

Now, that same community will have access to a rebuilt FOIA Machine that follows the same principles, but also taps into MuckRock’s rich database of agencies, jurisdictions, and exemptions.

In fact, the two sites will now share the same codebase, as MuckRock goes open source. As improvements are made to one tool they will more easily be developed for the other.

Read more here.