Sunshine Week recently announced the launch of Secrecy Tracker, a free public service developed by the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, in collaboration with BillTrack50.
Secrecy Tracker is designed to help the public and journalists track state and federal legislation that could impact your right to know. Looking to stay on top of proposed bills, analyze trends in legislative secrecy, or engage more deeply with the legislative process? Secrecy Tracker makes it easy and accessible.
The Secrecy Tracker’s intent is to educate the public, policy makers and others interested in freedom of information about pending and past legislation that could affect their right to know, as well as provide research in trends in access to civic information. The Brechner FOI Project does not lobby – it educates, informs and researches access to public records, open meetings and the courts. The Secrecy Tracker website was designed by Billy O’Keefe.
Key features of Secrecy Tracker include:
Accurate Bill Tracking: Powered by machine learning, Secrecy Tracker provides smarter searches beyond simple keyword matching, ensuring you don’t miss important legislation. Secrecy Tracker gets raw bill information from BillTrack50, which aggregates legislative data from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Congress, and presents it in a standardized format. Secrecy Tracker analyzes that information, applies customized searches using machine learning, and provides it to the public for free (Secrecy Tracker pays an annual subscription to BillTrack50 to utilize this data, so you don’t have to).
Trends & Analysis: Access a full history of bills from 2011 to the present and view trends in access to public information across all 50 states. Anyone can look up legislation in their state through keyword searches at their state legislative sites. That’s great, but Secrecy Tracker provides free, honed searches through BillTrack50’s similar tool, based on machine learning.
Completely free: The resource is provided at no cost to users.
Learn more about Secrecy Tracker here.
