Show HN: FOIA Mapper – a search engine for offline government records

foiamapper.com

4 pointsmgalka5 comments

This idea was my entry in the Knight Foundation News Challenge in Jan. Just completed a working version and launched earlier this week.

The purpose is to help Freedom of Information requestors (journalists mostly) find the info they're looking for.

Curious as to the technology stack and if the source code is open.

Pieced together with duct tape at the moment. The site is wordpress with a bunch of php/mysql and JavaScript added thoughout. Most of the work went into getting the data (lots of FOIA requests) and pulling it out of PDFs.

Nothing wrong with what works.

In the long run, it might be aesthetically? intellectually? satisfying to let the theme of transparency drive decisions about the code base...or not. Anyway, thanks.

Completely agree. Maybe will focus on that as the next round.

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