The purpose of TRAC is to provide the American people — and institutions of oversight such as Congress, news organizations, public interest groups, businesses, scholars, and lawyers — with comprehensive information about staffing, spending, and enforcement activities of the federal government. On a day-to-day basis, what are the agencies and prosecutors actually doing? Who are their employees and what are they paid? What do agency actions indicate about the priorities and practices of government? How do the activities of an agency or prosecutor in one community compare with those in a neighboring one or the nation as a whole? How have these activities changed over time? How does the record of one administration compare with the next? When the head of an agency or a district administrator changed, were there observable differences in actual enforcement priorities? When a new law was enacted or amended, what impact did it have on agency activities?
An essential step in the process of providing this information to the public is TRAC's systematic and informed use of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
In a working democracy that was consistent with its principles, government data collected and maintained by our tax dollars would be freely and readily made available to the American people. But in 1966, Congress found that a vast quantity of government information was being withheld and reacted by passing a law - the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This Act established the broad legal requirement that most government information must be made public.
The basic principle of FOIA is very simple: since the records of the federal government should be generally public, all you need to do is ask. For a variety of reasons — including the sheer number of records, the vast complexity in how information is recorded and stored, and the uneasiness many agencies feel about the public examining their day-to-day performance — the actual process of obtaining federal records is far from simple. Indeed, the systematic collection of such information usually is a difficult and time-consuming task. It is so difficult, in fact, that many news organizations, public interest groups, scholars and others do not bother to exercise their rights under FOIA. And even when they do, they can encounter years of delay and often are not successful.
Because comprehensive and relevant records about what an agency is doing — and not doing — are essential to meaningful oversight, TRAC continuously uses the law to obtain new data about government enforcement and regulatory activities. Some agencies are remarkably open. Other agencies are not. In some circumstances TRAC has to file suit in federal court to force the release of vital data. Persistence across even decades is sometimes required. Critical to TRAC's use of FOIA is a small army of lawyers who donate their time and energy to represent us in court. See http://tracreports.org/foia to read more about these efforts.
TRAC was established in 1989 as a research clearinghouse. Faculty and staff through the years have held appointments at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University. Today we operate from offices in Syracuse, New York, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a branch office on the West Coast. TRAC's work has been supported by numerous foundations such as the Rockefeller Family Fund, the New York Times Company Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Ford Foundation, JEHT Foundation, the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, the Beldon Fund, The Herb Block Foundation, and the Open Society Foundation. It has a partnership agreement to provide data and expertise on asylum to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Additionally, gifts and individual donations help offset our costs in providing services -- including our free public website stocked with data and reports we have carefully compiled -- for academics, reporters, attorneys, and others from around the world.
Once TRAC obtains data through its FOIA efforts, processing can begin. With the use of a variety of sophisticated statistical techniques, the raw information obtained from the agencies is checked and verified. Where possible, data from one agency is compared with another for general consistency. Through the addition of relevant population figures and staffing counts, the data is placed in an understandable context. County-level data obtained by TRAC on significant local community features can provide useful background about specific federal enforcement activities. For example, information on the relative number of people 65 and over living in an area could add perspective to a report on the prosecution of fraudulent medical providers who often prey on the elderly.
The focus of these efforts is to develop as comprehensive and detailed a picture as possible about what federal enforcement and regulatory agencies actually do, to describe what resources (staffing and funds) they have to work with to accomplish these tasks, and to organize all of this information to make it readily accessible to the public.
TRAC offers a large variety of information services with more being added:
TRAC is directed by Dr. Susan B. Long, a statistician and associate professor at Syracuse University's Whitman School of Management who as a FOIA pioneer has specialized in federal enforcement issues for more than 50 years. Dr. Long continues the work she began with David Burnham, an investigative writer and former New York Times reporter, who covered local, state, and federal enforcement issues for a half-century.
Other members of TRAC's full-time staff include Paula, our Program Manager; Michael, our Senior Software Engineer; Sean, our UX Designer and Frontend Developer, and Adam, our Research Associate. Additional part-time help on specific projects include law students and student interns, and other volunteers. Many volunteer attorneys provide pro bono support on our FOIA litigation work.
Email: info@tracreports.org