https://github.com/fgregg/foia-decrease

Does Open Data Decrease FOIA requests?
https://github.com/fgregg/foia-decrease

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Does Open Data Decrease FOIA requests?

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/fgregg/foia-decrease
• Owner: fgregg
• Created: 2015-05-05T02:47:26.000Z (over 9 years ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2015-05-05T14:53:05.000Z (over 9 years ago)
• Last Synced: 2024-10-15T09:55:51.492Z (3 months ago)
• Language: R
• Size: 172 KB
• Stars: 2
• Watchers: 2
• Forks: 2
• Open Issues: 0
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.md

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README

        
# foia-decrease

Does Open Data Decrease FOIA requests?

![Total FOIA requests](/total.png?raw=true "Total FOIA Requests")

Omits police, administrative hearings, health, and finance since these all have some data problems right now. The decrease over this period is not statistically significant.

![Dept of Buildings FOIA requests](/buildings.png?raw=true "Dept of Buildings FOIA Requests")

Department of Buildings is the ony Department with a clear decrease in FOIA requests. In the early period, most of the requests in the early period were about permits or building violations, which are now on the Data Portal.

![Non Dept of Buildings FOIA requests](/not_buildings.png?raw=true "Non Dept of Buildings FOIA Requests")

Department of Buildings FOIA requests make up a little less than half of the the total FOIA requests. Omitting this department, the overall number of FOIA requests is clearly increasing.

## Key Questions

- Open Data only seems to strongly substitute for FOIA requests in the building department. How were the FOIA requests for this department different than other departments?

- For efficiencies, the number of requests is not as interesting as effort spent responding to FOIA. What does that look like over time? 

## Notes

To make these images, run the the R script `chi_foia.R`. You need to be connected to the internet as we get the data from the http://data.cityofchicago.org SODA API.

- The police foia data ends in 2013

- The health foia data ends in 2013 and has a bizarre spike in 2012

- Most Administrative Hearings FOIA requests are for case files and often request multiple case files. At the beginning of 2014, Administrative Hearings started listing each case file as a separate line in the FOIA log to reflect the true volume more accurately.

## Thanks

Thanks to Jonathan Levy and Tom Schenk, Jr. for helping me track down some of the weirdnesses in this data.