Reports and Fact Sheets

Reinvent Albany regularly writes and publishes on issues and legislation relevant to our core mission. Below is a complete list of our reports, policy briefs, and memos.

May 2026 NYS Agencies Failing to Make FOIL Easier for Public FOIL Fail: NYS Agencies Not Using GovQA Software Tools that Make FOIL Easier for the Public Read more January 2026 Listening to FOIL 2025: Lessons from 11 New York State Agencies Reinvent Albany analyzed FOIL logs from 2024 provided by 11 units of New York State government to assess how well the Freedom of Information Law is working. Read more June 2025 Listening to FOIL 2025 Report: Lessons from Five NYS Agencies In the 2025 “Listening to FOIL” report, we used government agency logs of FOIL requests to assess how well FOIL is working. Read more April 2025 NYC Government Flouting Freedom of Information Law New Report Shows FOIL Requests and Delays Skyrocketing: NYC Gets Roughly 170,000 FOIL Requests a Year; 16% of FOIL Requests Still Open After a Year Read more March 2024 Listening to FOIL 2024: Lessons from Six NYS Agencies Our new report looks at the open records requests made per the Freedom of Information Law to six agencies of NYS government. Read more March 2022 Opening New York 2022: Rating 70 State Agency Transparency Plans What NYS agencies told the Governor they are doing to improve FOIL, Open Data, Open Meetings, and other basic transparency measures Read more January 2021 Legislative FOIL: A Tale of Two Houses Covers legislative FOIL and the two houses' respective approaches, including recommendations on options for reform. Read more August 2019 Where is the 2020-2024 MTA Capital Plan? Review of past MTA capital plan processes shows 2019 is one of most secretive since capital plans began in 1982, diverging from transparency norms. Read more May 2019 Open MTA – 50 Actions NY Can Take to Renew Public Trust in the MTA A comprehensive report that makes specific recommendations for improving the MTA’s transparency, governance, oversight and ethics. (2019) Read more November 2018 FOIL that Works: MTA 2018 An in-depth look at FOIL at the MTA shows a fragmented process and offers best practices for online FOIL and police incident reports (2018) Read more December 2017 NYS Courts Deny FOILers Attorneys’ Fees in Nearly 1 in 4 Lawsuits Even When Records Provided and Agencies Had No Reason to Withhold Read more March 2017 Listening to FOIL 2: NYC DOITT FOIL Requests 2015 An examination of the FOIL logs of one New York City agency (DoITT) tells us what data sets are high-value and should be open data (2015) Read more