Over the last nine months, our FOIA Fellow Jessie Gomez has been looking at public records law across the nation through our State of State Public Records Law project. Today, we’ll be exploring the major takeaways from her reporting.

High price tags and records exemptions remain consistent barriers to access.

Legislative efforts to reform state public records law are good, but not enough.

Transparency advocates serve as key players in gaining better access to government records.

Records law issues remain a pertinent part in transparency conversations.

Here are our final thoughts on the last nine months of exploring public records laws.

Back in June, we announced that DocumentCloud and MuckRock were merging. Today, DocumentCloud’s co-founder - and our Chief Strategy Officer - Aron Pilhofer will outline some of the platform’s less-known features to ensure you’re getting the most out your hard-won records.

For the past few months, we’ve talked with dozens of users to try and find a way to make MuckRock even easier for people who want to help open up government, whether they’re filing a single request or hundreds. We’re excited to finally show you the results.

One day you may find yourself comfortably cruising down the information superhighway, a question in your mind percolating into a public records request, when you suddenly realize, “Oh, no, I want to send this to a lot of agencies.” Fear not, fair factfinder. Drafting your requests can be more efficient than you know!

Since our founding six years ago, MuckRock has focused on one mission: To be the easiest way to request, analyze and share government documents in order to make politics more transparent and our democracy more informed. We’ve recently restructured into a non-profit to continue to serve that mission for years to come.