Get up-to-date details and status reports for bills from the most current legislative session.
Looking for historical data? Browse this year-by-year collection of open meetings and public records bills dating back to 2011.
The Secrecy Tracker was created in 2024 by the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications in collaboration with BillTrack50. The intent is to educate the public, policy makers and others interested in freedom of information about pending and past legislation that could affect their right to know, as well as provide research in trends in access to civic information. The Brechner FOI Project does not lobby – it educates, informs and researches access to public records, open meetings and the courts. The Secrecy Tracker website was designed by Billy O’Keefe.
Nothing. This is a free service to the public as part of our land-grant mission in outreach and education to the public. The Brechner FOI Project is funded through the College of Journalism and Communications and through endowments acquired since its founding in 1977.
We get our raw bill information from BillTrack50, which aggregates legislative data from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Congress, and presents it in a standardized format. We take that information, analyze it, apply customized searches using machine learning, and provide it for the public for free. We pay an annual subscription to BillTrack50 to utilize this data, so you don’t have to.
BillTrack50 is a for-profit company founded in Colorado in 2011 by Karen Suhaka. The company has provided its data to state freedom of information coalitions, through the National Freedom of Information Coalition, and serves nonprofits throughout the United States. Most of its data is available for free, but its more powerful tools are provided on a subscription-basis, providing alerts, saved searches and other functions. Through our subscription we provide many of those functions to you for free.
Anyone can look up legislation in their state through keyword searches at their state legislative sites. That’s great, but Secrecy Tracker provides, for free, honed searches through BillTrack50’s “similar” tool, based on machine learning. We applied our expertise in freedom of information, as well as the insights from state FOI coalitions and other experts, to train the model to avoid the false positives and increase accurate catches of bills that may not even share keywords but still be on target. Also, Secrecy Tracker allows analysis of trends going back to 2011 as well as a 50-state look for national context. We then are able to communicate that to a network of hundreds of citizens, advocates and government officials throughout the country to inform and educate – to allow them to take action and engage with their government, if they wish.