It is possible! For example, I recently received [1] a mysqldump of Chicago's "data dictionary" database, which is a collection of database schemas from databas

It is possible! For example, I recently received [1] a mysqldump of Chicago's "data dictionary" database, which is a collection of database schemas from databases throughout Chicago. That said - it's not always simple. The big problem is that information being released through FOIA still needs to be reviewed by a person, which can be time consuming and expensive. Especially so when a technical person gets involved. It's often just much easier (for everyone) to request specific information. The "data dictionary" database dump was only easy to get only because I knew for a fact that the database was already reviewed through a process that matched FOIA's. [1] https://www.muckrock.com/foi/chicago-169/data-dictionary-mysql-dump-59229/ https://www.muckrock.com/foi/chicago-169/data-dictionary-mys...