Insights methodology
Two-axis classification
Every records request is labeled on two axes: the government function it concerns, using US Census of Governments function codes, and the kind of record sought, using categories derived from California records retention schedules. Function codes carry a crosswalk to the UN COFOG scheme for future international editions.
Government functions
| Census code | Function | COFOG |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Air transportation (airports) | 04.5 |
| 04 | Corrections | 03.4 |
| 12 | Elementary and secondary education | 09.1 |
| 18 | Higher education | 09.4 |
| 23 | Financial administration | 01.1 |
| 24 | Fire protection | 03.2 |
| 25 | Judicial and legal | 03.3 |
| 29 | General government administration | 01.3 |
| 32 | Health | 07.4 |
| 36 | Hospitals | 07.3 |
| 44 | Highways and streets | 04.5 |
| 50 | Housing and community development | 06.1 |
| 52 | Libraries | 08.2 |
| 59 | Natural resources | 04.2 |
| 60 | Parking facilities | 04.5 |
| 61 | Parks and recreation | 08.1 |
| 62 | Police protection | 03.1 |
| 66 | Protective inspection and regulation (permits, code enforcement) | 04.1 |
| 79 | Public welfare | 10.9 |
| 80 | Sewerage | 05.2 |
| 81 | Solid waste management | 05.1 |
| 89 | Other and unallocable | 01.6 |
| 91 | Water supply | 06.3 |
| 92 | Electric power | 04.3 |
| 94 | Public transit | 04.5 |
Record types
- Contracts and bids
- Permits and property records
- Communications and correspondence
- Incident reports and body-worn camera footage
- Personnel records
- Financial records
- Licenses
- Litigation and claims
- Other records
Requester categories
- Commercial and data resellers
- Law firms
- Insurance
- News media
- Government agencies
- Academic and nonprofit
- Individuals
- Unknown
Validation
Classifications are produced by a locally run language model and validated against a stratified hand-labeled sample. Each report states the sample size and per-axis agreement it was gated on. A report does not publish below 85% agreement on the function axis.
Privacy
We publish requester categories and, where volume warrants, the names of organizations. We never publish the names, email addresses, or request counts of identifiable private individuals.
Editions
Every report is a frozen, dated edition. Numbers do not change after publication; corrections ship as a new visible version of the same edition. The dataset behind each report is downloadable from the report page under a CC BY 4.0 license.
Data comes from publicly available information we cite, or from public records requests filed under state law. See law.ungovr.org/records/us.