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 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 April 2019 Steps Forward for MTA FOIL and Open Data 18 specific actions the MTA can take to improve transparency now. (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 Open New York “Tools” Recommendations for specific tools that enable state agencies to quickly create web-based information resources to be included in OpenNY.gov (2011) Read more March 2017 State Email Retention Policy New York State should match the Federal Government's email retention policy and save emails for 7 years and the emails of executive staff permanently (2014) 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 January 2016 Modest Burden, Modest Value: Extending FOIL to NYS Legislature January 2016 January 13, 2016 analysis recommending NYS legislature subject itself completely to Freedom of Information Law as do 23 other state legislatures. Report notes NYC Council already subjected to FOIL and in 2014 got only approximately 70 FOIL requests compared to more than 50,000 received by mayoral agencies. Includes chart of 23 state legislatures and commonly FOILed topics. Read more