Reports and Fact Sheets
Issue: Open Govt Freedom of Information

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
Report
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
Fact Sheet
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 December 2025
Report
Transparency Gap: NY Senate Confirmation Votes Kept Behind Two Layers of Obstacles Reinvent Albany's report discovered two major obstacles when trying to understand how NY Senators vote on confirmations: 1) they do not publish votes on their website, and 2) they overuse slate voting. Read more December 2025
Building a 21st Century Judiciary: A Reform Agenda for New York City Our joint report with Scrutinize calls on the incoming mayor to make NYC’s little-noticed process to appoint judges modern and transparent 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 2025
New Report Update Highlights Transparency Leaders in NY’s Criminal Courts A small group of judges and counties leads the way in publishing decisions, demonstrating that open justice is possible—even as many decisions are not published online Read more May 2024
Agency Transparency Plans All Fizzle, No Sizzle Our report reviewed 66 transparency plans by NYS agencies to Gov. Hochul in Q1 2024, finding them incomplete and underwhelming. 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 July 2023
“Open ESD” Report Recommends Major Reforms for Secretive State Authority Report includes 35 specific actions to improve Empire State Development’s transparency, governance, oversight, and ethics. 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