Greetings, PDAP newsletter subscriber! It’s been a while, and this is a big update about new features and staffing updates. Let’s get to it!

Selected software updates

Community labeling

We have built a pipeline for labeling new Data Sources, and tested it with the help of several patient and dedicated volunteers. It is working well, and has a lot fantastic features to keep the community focused on labeling data where our users are searching.

We are in the final stages of migrating the labeling app from Retool to our own website, where users’ contributions will accrue points à la freerice.com (IYKYK). We are very excited about gamifying this activity. Sign up at pdap.io to be the first to find out when we launch!

Distributing power from admins

We have stopped relying on admin approval for new Data Sources, instead pivoting to a consensus acceptance model. When a new Data Source is submitted, it joins the community labeling queue. Once two reviewers agree about how to classify a URL, it is considered “accepted” and joins the public database—or “not relevant” and stashed away.

Case study: supporting veteran employment

After we deployed the map at pdap.io, the natural progression is to use this infrastructure for different kinds of reports and displays. The first iteration is a dedicated “Court and Warrant” portal.

This work is in response to a familiar story: records that should be public are difficult to locate on-demand. All VA Medical Centers in the United States have vocational services departments to help veterans find and apply for jobs. Veterans may not know what their criminal history looks like, or whether they have open warrants. The VA wants to check in advance for histories of convictions and open warrants to: resolve cases of mistaken identity; close open warrants; predict what will show up on background checks; understand what kinds of jobs may be realistic. A volunteer did a sweep in every state and county with a VA medical center, populating the dashboard for users across the country. A bit of feedback:

Oh my goodness, this is amazing!! It will be so helpful for all our staff. I’ll share it with our national team as well.

Next up: maps tuned for other kinds of investigation and analysis.

Transitioning from growth to stability

We set out to build a suite of open-source tools for making data about police systems more accessible to all. Success! Now, instead of our website describing our plans and goals, it is a living record of what we have made.

We have survived the peaks and valleys of public interest in our project by making every decision with an eye toward longevity, and a felt sense of duty to preserve the efforts of our community. The bulk of our expenses has always been staffing, to accelerate and amplify the work of volunteers.

Given the lull in big-donor funding, we’ve decided to ramp down our staffing spend for the time being. This leaves us with about $40k in the bank—a perilous amount for an org with a staff, but a fortune for a volunteer-based nonprofit with minimal expenses. Our board and Executive Director (yours truly) will continue to serve on a volunteer basis.

Our overhead to keep the site and database working hovers under $500 per month, and we are proud of the security this affords: we could keep our site operational exactly as it is for years without another donation.

Of course, stability ≠ stasis. We are spending modestly on focused contract work to stay up to date on maintenance, and move forward our most critical features.

Join our grassroots movement

It is critical that we have small-dollar recurring donations to move us forward and keep us online. Big-donor money helped us through our early years, but we need to prove that we have a grassroots community that believes our work is important.

Even $1 a month moves the needle, because it represents someone who believes in our mission. If police transparency is important to you, make a donation today at pdap.io/donate.

If you can’t donate today, please create a free account at pdap.io to support our work and let us know where you’d like to see data!