This is the repository for a talk on marrying freedom of information requests and data journalism to report on criminal justice in Canada. The slides can be found here: https://tomcardoso.github.io/foi-data-journalism/
This talk was originally given at the University of Winnipeg's Centre for Access to Information and Justice on February 26, 2020. Here's a brief description:
All too often, data used in criminal justice research and reporting comes from one of a handful of sources: Statistics Canada, open data portals, or a polite request to a government body. Unfortunately, these datasets are always summarized and aggregated, stamping out interesting patterns. But with a bit of strategy (and a whole lot of patience), freedom of information (FOI) requests can get you right to the source – the database itself. This talk will explore how to request these large, closely-guarded datasets through FOIs, summarize the ways these datasets can be analyzed, and provide examples of the kind of findings that are possible when you go right to the source.
Some resources mentioned:
- Full tipsheet
- My FOI request tracking spreadsheet
- ATIPster, a bookmarklet for filing federal access to information requests
- Piggyback, a bookmarklet for requesting previously-released federal requests
- Startr, a template for data journalism in R
- Klaxon, a free self-hosted web service that notifies you when a web page changes
- FOI basics talk
- Intro to scraping class