Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) is a data gathering, data research, and data distribution
organization that was founded in 1989 at Syracuse University.
TRAC's Purpose
The purpose of TRAC is to provide the American people — and institutions of oversight such as Congress,
news organizations, public interest groups, businesses, scholars, and lawyers — with comprehensive
information about staffing, spending, and enforcement activities of the federal government. On a day-to-day
basis, what are the agencies and prosecutors actually doing? Who are their employees and what are they paid?
What do agency actions indicate about the priorities and practices of government? How do the activities of an
agency or prosecutor in one community compare with those in a neighboring one or the nation as a whole? How have
these activities changed over time? How does the record of one administration compare with the next? When the
head of an agency or a district administrator changed, were there observable differences in actual enforcement
priorities? When a new law was enacted or amended, what impact did it have on agency activities?
An essential step in the process of providing this information to the public is TRAC's systematic and informed
use of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
TRAC's Use of FOIA
In a working democracy that was consistent with its principles, government data collected and maintained by our
tax dollars would be freely and readily made available to the American people. But in 1966, Congress found that
a vast quantity of government information was being withheld and reacted by passing a law - the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA). This Act established the broad legal requirement that most government information must
be made public.
The basic principle of FOIA is very simple: since the records of the federal government should be generally
public, all you need to do is ask. For a variety of reasons — including the sheer number of records, the
vast complexity in how information is recorded and stored, and the uneasiness many agencies feel about the
public examining their day-to-day performance — the actual process of obtaining federal records is far
from simple. Indeed, the systematic collection of such information usually is a difficult and time-consuming
task. It is so difficult, in fact, that many news organizations, public interest groups, scholars and others do
not bother to exercise their rights under FOIA. And even when they do, they can encounter years of delay and
often are not successful.
Because comprehensive and relevant records about what an agency is doing — and not doing — are
essential to meaningful oversight, TRAC continuously uses the law to obtain new data about government
enforcement and regulatory activities. Some agencies are remarkably open. Other agencies are not. In some
circumstances TRAC has to file suit in federal court to force the release of vital data. Persistence across even
decades is sometimes required. Critical to TRAC's use of FOIA is a small army of lawyers who donate their time
and energy to represent us in court. See
http://tracreports.org/foia to
read more about these efforts.
TRAC's History
TRAC was established in 1989 as a research clearinghouse. Faculty and staff through the years have held
appointments at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Martin J. Whitman School of Management
at Syracuse University. Today we operate from offices in Syracuse, New York, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a
branch office on the West Coast. TRAC's work has been supported by numerous foundations such as the Rockefeller
Family Fund, the New York Times Company Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Carnegie
Corporation of New York, Ford Foundation, JEHT Foundation, the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, the Beldon
Fund, The Herb Block Foundation, and the Open Society Foundation. It has a partnership agreement to provide data
and expertise on asylum to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Additionally, gifts and
individual donations help offset our costs in providing services -- including our free public website stocked
with data and reports we have carefully compiled -- for academics, reporters, attorneys, and others from around
the world.
TRAC's Analyses of Data
Once TRAC obtains data through its FOIA efforts, processing can begin. With the use of a variety of
sophisticated statistical techniques, the raw information obtained from the agencies is checked and verified.
Where possible, data from one agency is compared with another for general consistency. Through the addition of
relevant population figures and staffing counts, the data is placed in an understandable context. County-level
data obtained by TRAC on significant local community features can provide useful background about specific
federal enforcement activities. For example, information on the relative number of people 65 and over living in
an area could add perspective to a report on the prosecution of fraudulent medical providers who often prey on
the elderly.
The focus of these efforts is to develop as comprehensive and detailed a picture as possible about what federal
enforcement and regulatory agencies actually do, to describe what resources (staffing and funds) they have to
work with to accomplish these tasks, and to organize all of this information to make it readily accessible to
the public.
TRAC's Services
TRAC offers a large variety of information services with more being added:
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TRAC Public Web Site. Since 1996, TRAC has mounted and updated a
series of specialized sites on the World Wide Web with highly detailed but easy-to-access information on
selected federal enforcement agencies, special topical reports, and "bulletins" about federal enforcement,
staffing, and expenditures. We recently added QuickFacts and TRACmeters so at a glance anyone can see what the
latest data show.
The web areas — featuring colorful maps and graphs and tens of thousands of pages of tables and other
supporting material — are available without charge to anyone with access to the internet. Currently
featured are separate TRAC Web areas describing the enforcement activities and staffing patterns regarding the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. And still another area, TRAC-Immigration, deals in depth
with how our nation's immigration laws are enforced in administrative and criminal courts by a wide variety of
agencies. Reports include records of individual judges. A reference library containing government immigration
studies and a glossary are also maintained.
We have long been known for our individual reports covering asylum decisions for Immigration Court judges. Our
Judge Information Center (JIC) features reports covering individual judges who determine criminal sentences as
well as their promptness in handling civil litigation in our U.S. District Courts. Another area features
TRAC's most recent reports, access to the archives, and bulletins detailing the most recent data updates. From
here, for a minimal charge, it is possible to access detailed data and reports formerly available to
subscribers only.
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TRACFED Data Warehouse. At
http://tracreports.org/tracfed
you will find the dynamic subscription site that allows access to TRAC's data warehouse. The warehouse
provides a vast range of information about federal enforcement activities — criminal, civil, and
administrative — as well as detailed information about federal staffing, federal funds, and the diverse
characteristics of counties, federal districts, and states. Subscribers, with the click of a mouse, can
request specific statistics, detailed listings, maps, or charts and have the information returned immediately
to their browser. More advanced web-tools allow users to conduct tailor-made analyses of specific subsets
("data slices") they want to examine in depth. A flash movie allows you to view without charge TRACFED
features.
All federal criminal enforcement activities are covered — under any law or Justice Department program
category, by any agency, and in any one of the 90 federal judicial districts or for the nation as a whole. The
civil enforcement layer allows analysis of civil litigation handled by the U.S. Attorneys where the government
sues or is itself the subject of a suit. In either case, broad statistical reviews as well as detailed
information about individual cases or matters may be obtained. The administrative enforcement layer, now
featuring information about IRS audit and collection actions, focuses upon administrative enforcement
activities outside of court.
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Search and Reports. With TRAC's report search tool, users can
search all of TRAC's reports.
Additionally, TRAC provides very timely month-by-month reports and data tracking changes in the government's
criminal enforcement activities. With these bulletins the public has been able to document what the government
was doing almost as soon as it did it. Many of these bulletins are
free (see
list), while others are available to subscribers or to non-subscribers for a
small fee
(see list of all bulletins.)
Using
TRAC's Data Interpreter, you can also generate combination reports — for example, combining an agency selection with district,
or district with program, etc. — and drill down to specific details of the individual court cases. In
addition to prosecutions and convictions, the Data Interpreter lets you create bulletins on prison sentences
of 1 year or more. Also, in addition to the current month, you can generate fiscal year-to-date reports. As
with bulletins, combination reports are available to subscribers or for a small fee.
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TRAC Training. TRAC offers training to new site license
subscribers and to renewing sites who want to improve their ability to use data to examine the actual policies
of individual U.S. Attorneys, agencies, and administrations or to explore how well or poorly a specific law is
functioning. Our training does not focus on technical skills like using software-specific commands. Rather, it
is designed to give users a solid framework for understanding how they can use enforcement data for
constructive oversight. What information is available? How can it be explored? Because our training sessions
have become so popular, we have been forced to restrict them to site license subscribers. Individuals who
subscribe monthly can use our online help and tutorials to help them get started and to improve their skills.
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TRAC Help and Tutorials. For monthly subscribers and others who
think they might be interested, TRAC has created an extensive Help section with information about all our
offerings and tools. Tutorial movies walk you through the "How-To" of using the data warehouse. All are
available free of charge.
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TRAC Research. TRAC conducts in-depth analyses and publishes the
findings on the public website. Selected examples of how these reports and TRAC data have been used by the
news media, Congress, and public interest groups are available in the
TRAC at Work section
on this website.
TRAC's Staff
TRAC is directed by Dr. Susan B. Long, a statistician and associate professor at Syracuse University's Whitman
School of Management who as a FOIA pioneer has specialized in federal enforcement issues for more than 50 years.
Dr. Long continues the work she began with David Burnham, an investigative writer and former New York Times
reporter, who covered local, state, and federal enforcement issues for a half-century.
Other members of TRAC's full-time staff include Paula, our Program Manager; Michael, our Senior Software
Engineer; Sean, our UX Designer and Frontend Developer, and Adam, our Research Associate. Additional part-time
help on specific projects include law students and student interns, and other volunteers. Many volunteer
attorneys provide pro bono support on our FOIA litigation work.
Contact Us
archived 13 Apr 2026 21:43:39 UTC