DLP Dispatch #12
Hello, and welcome to the 12th edition of the Data Liberation Project’s newsletter. Inside: Axios publishes a DLP-powered project; newly liberated datasets from the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Peace Corps; improvements to the Acute Hospital Care at Home data; new documentation for our Animal Welfare Act inspection data; and a couple of new FOIAs.
Axios publishes a DLP-powered project
A few weeks ago, a team of journalists at Axios published an interactive, searchable map of "facilities storing large quantities of hazardous chemicals in the U.S." — i.e., those required to participate in the EPA's Risk Management Program. The project draws upon data obtained and shared by Data Liberation Project. The team also published three related articles:
- "Dangerous chemicals are stored all over the U.S.," an overview of the project
- "3 chemicals account for most accidents," pointing to ammonia, chlorine / chlorine dioxide, hydrofluoric acid, with a mention of CNN's ammonia-accident reporting (see DLP Dispatch #7)
- "Some chemical accidents are reported too late," putting numbers on a troubling pattern
Liberated: Unaccompanied child incident reports (with caveats)
The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), part of the Administration for Children & Families (ACF), is officially responsible for the care of every unaccompanied child, “defined as a child who has no lawful immigration status in the United States; has not attained 18 years of age; and, with respect to whom, there is no parent or legal guardian in the United States, or no parent or legal guardian in the United States available to provide care and physical custody.”
ORR-funded facilities provide “care and custody for [unaccompanied children] until they can be safely released to a sponsor, repatriated to their home country, or obtain legal status. [...] Services provided at care provider facilities include, but are not limited to, education, recreation, vocational training, acculturation, nutrition, medical, mental health, legal, and case management.”
ORR monitors the care facilities it funds, and it imposes a range of requirements, including that facilities submit reports when certain types of incidents occur. Through a FOIA request to ACF, the Data Liberation Project has received 20 database tables with information about these incidents and reports.
DLP volunteers and I spent recent weeks working to document and understand the data. Ultimately, we found some key concerns about the completeness of the records — most notably, a core table seems to be missing.
In communications with ACF, the agency appears to be aware of the situation and willing to rectify it. But because we don't know how long it will take to receive the missing records, and because some portions of the records may still be useful to the public, I've decided to release what we have so far. The best place to get started is our introductory documentation, which provides context for the records and a summary of our concerns.
Many thanks to volunteers Rebecka Flynn, David Mamaril Horowitz, Joerg Rings, and Joseph Andrew Risi for contributing to the documentation and research.
Liberated: CFPB enforcement relief & penalties
One of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s key roles is to investigate and enforce potential violations of federal consumer finance laws. To track and organize those efforts, the CFPB uses an “enforcement matter management system” called ENForce.
On May 30, 2023, the DLP filed a FOIA request for detailed tables from that system. On September 18, 2023, the agency provided a single spreadsheet in response, listing the amounts and dates of court-ordered relief and penalties in those enforcement matters.
Although the Data Liberation Project plans to appeal the agency’s response, we are providing the spreadsheet now, along with DLP-written documentation, so that the public can make use of it.
Many thanks to DLP student-intern Mackenzie Peluso for contributing several helpful visualizations.
Liberated: Peace Corps resignation counts
If a Peace Corps volunteer chooses to resign from their position, an assessment of the reason for this resignation is made by a supervising staff officer and collected via Form MS-284 Attachment D.
In a collaboration with journalist Corin Faife, the Data Liberation Project filed a FOIA request that sought all database records collected through that form. At first, the Peace Corps sent a document with few details and all of the numbers redacted. We successfully appealed that initial response; upon granting the appeal, the agency provided a spreadsheet listing the number of resigned Peace Corps volunteers by post and resignation reasons through July 2023.
Each row in the spreadsheet indicates:
- The Peace Corps post — generally a single country but with some exceptions, such as “ALBANIA/MONTENEGRO” and “EASTERN CARIBBEAN”
- The primary reason listed for resignation (if any), from a set of possible categories — e.g., “Personal/Family,” “other career opportunity,” or “Peace Corps policies”
- The secondary reason listed (if any), from the same set of categories
- The number of volunteers corresponding to that post/primary-reason/secondary-reason through July 2023
Note: The Peace Corps says it cannot vouch for the accuracy of the data. See here for more details.
Improved and updated: Acute Hospital Care at Home data
DLP Dispatch #10 introduced a new dataset from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services's Acute Hospital Care at Home (AHCAH) waiver program.
This marked the first time the public has ever had access to hospital-level AHCAH data. Unfortunately, the Data Liberation Project also observed (and noted) some issues with the way the records had been produced, which limited their usefulness. Good news: After a bit of back-and-forth with a helpful contact at CMS, the agency has provided an updated set of records, which the Data Liberation Project published last week.
The changes, in brief:
- CMS has fixed the issue in which Measure 1c was missing from the data for Tier 1–waivered hospitals
- CMS has added "Status" and "Created" columns to all of the records
- CMS has provided a data dictionary
- CMS has removed hospital personnel contact info and a set of internal identifiers
- The records now extend through Sept. 14, 2023
New documentation for Animal Welfare Act inspection data
Since February, the Data Liberation Project — in collaboration with Big Local News — has been publishing a daily-updated dataset of all Animal Welfare Act inspection reports released by APHIS, a branch of the USDA.
Today the DLP is publishing new documentation for that project, in the form of an FAQ provides useful context for the data: What entities are inspected? How do inspections work? What are the different types of violation citations? This supplements the more data-technical documentation in the project's GitHub repository.
Many thanks to former DLP student-intern Jake Zucker for taking the lead on this documentation.
New FOIAs
Since the last dispatch, the Data Liberation Project has filed two new FOIA requests:
- Data on “upcoming collective bargaining” notices submitted to federal labor mediators, a collaboration with Forest Gregg
- Records from the Department of Defense’s child and domestic abuse incident reporting system, a collaboration with Kim Nguyen
That’s all for now! Thank you for reading, and don’t hesitate to reply. Alternatively, fill out the volunteer form and/or suggestion form.
— Jeremy