TRAC collects big data from the federal agencies and maintains a databases of federal enforcement, staffing and financial data.[3][4][5][6][7][8] TRAC also focuses on using the Freedom of Information Act to request such data.[9] The FOIA Project is an initiative of TRAC that monitors federal agency FOIA decisions and practices.[10][11][12]
Over the years, TRAC has been cited in hundreds of news articles.[13]
Barlett and Steele, who won the Pulitzer Prizes for their story on the Internal Revenue Service in 1975 and 1989, couldn’t get the data from IRS and received the data from Long & Burnham instead. This and other inquiries led Long to consider starting an organization dedicated to data collection and analysis.[15]
TRAC makes data available to the public through a variety of interactive data tools, user-generated reports, and original research reports. TRAC uses a variety of statistical techniques to verify data received from government agencies. Where possible, TRAC compares new data with prior data, other publicly available data, and data from other agencies to ensure consistency and accuracy. TRAC works with academic researchers to facilitate more sophisticated research projects.[2] The data warehouse and the specialized data mining tools designed, created and maintained by TRAC are run on SAS software backend.[14]
From its FOIA requests, TRAC adds more than 3 billion new records to its database annually (>250 million records per month). Furthermore more than 300,000 monthly records on civil and criminal proceedings are also obtained.[16]
The TRAC website consists of various subsections that list data from specific government agencies and special projects. These sections include:
TRACFED offers compiled federal data concerning enforcement (Criminal, Civil, Administrative), staffing, and funding.[1]
TRAC-FBI provides compiled data information about the FBI, including its staffing and criminal prosecution, enforcement activities and map and tables.
TRAC-IRS: Data collection from the IRS predates founding of TRAC.[15][17]
TRAC-Immigration:[18][19][20] TRAC Immigration website was launched in 2006 and contains immigration related written reports, one-click tool access to the latest monthly data on immigration enforcement, library of immigration reports by the Government Accountability Office, Congressional Research Service and inspectors general, and plain English glossary of frequently used words and acronyms.[21] TRAC's immigration court data was featured on an episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.[22] In 2019, TRAC found that immigration data was missing and accused Trump’s Justice Department of systematically deleting immigration court records.[23]
Judges: TRAC is one of the oldest independent organizations covering federal enforcement and federal judges. In 2014, TRAC launched a Judge Information Tool to provide information on and track Performance of federal district court judges on topics such as disparities in judge asylum decisions.[24][25][26] In September 2007, U.S. District JudgeNorman A. Mordue ruled against TRAC saying that federal employee information can be withheld by the government from the public.[27] In 2009, a New York Times report cited TRAC data to describe backlogged immigration courts and a 2020 CNN report reported the same issue.[28][29][30]
FOIA Project
The FOIA Project was created by TRAC to track government agencies' responsiveness to public records requests and to document the growing number of FOIA cases litigated in federal court.[10] The Project maintains a public website with information on federal FOIA cases,[31] agency FOIA processing times, a list of the most active FOIA litigators, and research reports written by TRAC researchers. The Project's research on FOIA litigation has been cited by the New York Times and the Washington Free Beacon.[32]
TRAC has been praised by fellows at the anti-immigration think tank Center for Immigration Studies for the quality of the data it provides on immigration as well as the Federal Courts and federal law enforcement organizations.[35][36][37]
TRAC employs multiple Resident Faculty Fellows.[16] Annually, many student fellowships are awarded for research purposes.[45] TRAC also provides educational opportunities for Syracuse students in the areas of data analysis, software development, systems administration, research, graphics and instructional design.[2][46]
^"TRAC at Work". trac.syr.edu. TRAC. Retrieved 9 March 2021.
^ abLong, Susan; Roberge, Linda; Lamicela, Jeffrey (2003). "SAS®-Based Warehouse and Mining Tools Keep Tabs on U.S. Government". SAS Conference Proceedings. 28 (SAS Users Group International 28/SUGI 28). Syracuse, NY: Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse: 1–6. Archived from the original(PDF) on 3 March 2021. Retrieved 3 March 2021.
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