The first problem here is the data formats state and federal governments use. You'll see a hodgepodge, but primarily MS Office $version . The biggest problem w

The first problem here is the data formats state and federal governments use. You'll see a hodgepodge, but primarily MS Office $version . The biggest problem with this terrible binary format is that metadata can leak a great deal that should have not been released. So this leads to PDF output of word/excel. The next area is that especially local government offices have no way of setting up a data portal. I'm working on this right now, where the only way to get data out of Bloomington,IN is to do FOIA requests every week/month over the data you want. This absolutely should be available via a portal, and not locked behind "in person, mail, fax at cost of .10$ a page".