Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
My Recent-ish Government Transparency Efforts
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2019 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
I've put together a page of my past few years of Freedom of Information Law requests and the responses they've garnered. In particular, folks might be interested in the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's followup reports to 2005's Local Law 20, regarding the quantities and locations of automated external defibrillators at certain public places -- they wrote these reports and submitted them to the City Council, but I couldn't find them anywhere online till I asked DOHMH for them.
Now I have a Muckrock account, which I used to successfully get the list of ~600 DMV-licensed driving schools in New York State. Funniest names: "Accurate Drving School", the coexistence of "Evolution" and "Revolution" driving schools, "Good Luck Driving School", the coexistence of "Mistah Driver Auto School" and "Mister Driver Driving School", "Super Mario's Driving Connection", and "Totally Cool Driving".
