With Kickstarter Funding, FOIA Machine Wants To Help Fix Public Records

FOIA Machine, a platform that aims to streamline the process of tracking of filing and tracking public record requests, has raised more than $29,000 on Kickstarter — exceeding its funding goal by more than $10,000.

Backed by the Center for Investigative Reporting, the project grew out of a 2012 effort called BirdDog. With the help of $47,000 in seed funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's Knight Prototype Fund, the project expanded from collecting statistics on government response times to Freedom of Information Act requests into actually generating such requests. It has been tested internally by reporters at CIR, and once it is opened up to public use, it will be hosted by Investigative Reporters and Editors, a professional organization. Shane Shifflett, a developer on the FOIA Machine project and a data developer at the Huffington Post, says the team is now figuring out what features to add given their additional funding.