class: center, middle, inverse, title-slide # Using Freedom of Information Laws to Enhance Academic Research ### Gavin Rozzi, MS ### Drug Policy Alliance, Department of Research & Academic Engagement ### October 15th, 2020 --- class: center, middle # What are Freedom of Information Laws? --- class: inverse, center, middle # FOI is a powerful, but underutilized research tool Lee (2001) estimates that just 1% of federal FOIA requests have been made by scholars & researchers! <cite>Lee, R. M. (2001). Research Uses of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Field Methods, 13(4), 370–391.https://doi.org/10.1177/1525822X0101300404</cite> --- # What can you obtain with them? - Government documents, public employee data, financial records, emails etc. - A very broad array of structured data maintained on government computer systems NFOIC [maintains a list of state FOI laws](https://www.nfoic.org/coalitions/state-foi-resources/state-freedom-of-information-laws) --- # Proactive Disclosure - Some agencies maintain FOIA reading rooms where requests and responses are published - Deluca (2020) [identified 240 of them at the federal level](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740624X18304702) <cite>DeLuca, L. (2020). Searching FOIA Libraries for government information. Government Information Quarterly, 37(1), 101417.</cite>  --- class: center, middle # My work with FOI laws  --- class: inverse, center, middle # Research Applications of FOI Laws --- # Testing whether political donors have better access - U.C. researchers submitted FOI requests to local governments to test whether donors received quicker responses - Did not find a difference between responses for requests framed from engaged citizens vs. donors <cite>Jenkins, N. R., Landgrave, M., & Martinez, G. E. (2020). Do political donors have greater access to government officials? Evidence from a FOIA field experiment with US municipalities. Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, 3(2)</cite> --- # Tracking The Opioid Epidemic in NJ - State of NJ requires LE narcan deployments to be submitted to a central database - Anonymized records of each overdose can be obtained as a CSV file under OPRA  --- # Police Use of Force Incidents - NJ.com journalists requested 5 years of use of force reports from local police - PDF documents were entered into a database available from [ProPublica](https://www.propublica.org/datastore/dataset/police-use-of-force-new-jersey)  --- # Related work: DoD 1033 Program - FOI laws can be used to probe how police are using military equipment - federal data only tells one part of the story - Can supplement proactively disclosed data with additional context from local agencies  --- # Juvenile Justice - Columbia University student Kaitlin Allsopp used OPRA to request county budgets to monitor N.J.'s juvenile justice system as part of her M.A. thesis > The independent variables tested in this analysis include annual county-level budget allocations to juvenile detention centers and community-based juvenile justice services; data for these two variables are compiled from each county’s fiscal year 2020 adopted budget by identifying respective line-item and administrative classifications under allocations --- # Flattening the curve (of delayed FOI responses!) Ongoing project applying ARIMA machine learning algorithm to identify days where responses were delayed by COVID-19 in NJ at the height of the pandemic.  --- class: inverse, center, middle # Opening up public data held by private corporations - Sometimes public agencies contract with private vendors to maintain data - This data is usually within the reach of FOI laws! --- # Example: Active911 - App used by first responders to coordinate police / fire responses - Geotagged data can be exported by administrators and obtained via FOI laws - Useful for mapping public safety incidents and linking with other datasets (census etc.)  --- # Another example: ReportIt - ReportIt is an app that allows citizens to anonymously report maintenance / crime issues to cities. - Data can be exported to an Excel sheet and requested under FOI laws - Useful for monintoring incidents occuring in cities for trends  --- class: inverse, center, middle # Potential Challenges & Pitfalls --- class: inverse, center, middle # FOI Laws are **not** perfect disclosure tools - Unevenly applied exemptions - Abusive fees - Delayed responses --- # Handling Denied Requests FOI requirements vary widely across jurisdictions, but usually you can: - Informally push back in response to the custodian (cite the law!) - Administratively appeal the denial - Sue in court to compel disclosure --- # Administrative Appeals Often free & easier than filing a lawsuit, but can be **slow**! For example, expect to wait 2 years in NJ: >The GRC was supposed to be the faster, easier alternative to filing a lawsuit in state court. But a review of the council’s internal tracking system shows **it has a backlog dating back to 2014**, tying up some cases without a resolution for years. <cite>[Hernandez, Joseph (2018) Appealing a public records request denial in N.J.? Don’t hold your breath, WHYY](https://whyy.org/segments/appealing-a-public-records-request-denial-in-n-j-dont-hold-your-breath/)</cite> --- # Filing a Lawsuit - **Some** states have fee-shifting provisions (prevailing party test) - Can otherwise be cost prohibitive - Likely to be quicker than administrative appeals in some jurisdictions --- # Wrong Format Sometimes authorities will give you a PDF when you were expecting an Excel spreadsheet or CSV!  --- # Extracting data from PDFs - For PDFs, you can extract tabular data using [Tabula](https://tabula.technology/) - Tabula recognizes tables in documents, and extracts data that can be stored in a tabular format - It **only** works on text-based PDFs --- # Example: New Brunswick, NJ Police Dispatch Logs - Originally provided to requester as a large PDF file - I used Tabula to extract hundreds of pages into a CSV file, and then geocoded the data - The result can then be analyzed and mapped --- class: center, inverse background-image: url("keplermap.png") # Putting it all together --- class: center, middle, inverse # Q&A --- # Thank you! ## Stay in touch: - Personal website: [gavinrozzi.com](https://www.gavinrozzi.com) - Lab website: [rucilab.rutgers.edu](https://rucilab.rutgers.edu) - Twitter: [@gavroz](https://twitter.com/gavroz) - Email: [hello@gavinrozzi.com](mailto:hello@gavinrozzi.com) ---