The Data Liberation Project transparency initiative is joining MuckRock, where together with Big Local News, it will expand how the community of FOIA enthusiasts requests, documents and publishes data.

Since 2022, the Data Liberation Project — a volunteer effort led by data journalist Jeremy Singer-Vine — has used FOIA laws and web scraping to make a wide range of government data sets public and usable.

Those efforts have helped newsrooms and the public keep an eye on TSA complaints, explore data on over 58,000 boating accidents and examine an expansive collection of hazardous material transportation reports.

In addition to obtaining these critical data sets, the Data Liberation Project meticulously documents how to understand the data, including its background, caveats and data cleaning steps undertaken.

As Singer-Vine begins a new role as data editor at The New York Times, the Data Liberation Project will become a MuckRock initiative in partnership with Big Local News. Working with both existing DLP volunteers as well as the broader MuckRock and Big Local communities, we will continue to identify interesting data sets, request them, and release well-documented data in the public interest. We’ll also begin tracking Data Liberation Project requests through MuckRock, so that anyone can follow along on their progress or follow up with new requests for even more data.

Big Local News will be joining the project’s work to help clean, document and disseminate data sets, publishing detailed reporting recipes on how to understand and use them while helping keep the project’s scrapers working smoothly. From its base at Stanford University, Big Local News supports local journalism by gathering data, building tools and collaborating with reporters. Our site also offers a free archiving service for journalists to store, share and publish data.

Come join the project!

This partnership will also give MuckRock’s community of thousands of requesters and Big Local News’ users new opportunities to collaborate on data liberation efforts. Starting in October, we’ll be hosting monthly discussions on what data sets we should prioritize, sharings tips and tricks for how to wrangle messy data, and continue on with the groundwork already set by Singer-Vine. You can register for the first of these here, on October 22nd at 2 P.M. Eastern.

If you’re not already a subscriber, join the MuckRock newsletter for updates and MuckRock’s Slack, which is hosting a dedicated Data Liberation Project channel. If you want to get your digital hands dirty, you can register for the next volunteer onboarding to see what the Data Liberation Project is all about as we plan out our next data release. You can also reach out for more information to Big Local News at [email protected].