I really hope that this portends advances in other government agencies, as well. The judiciary, for example, is in massive need of an overhaul on this scale. Ea

I really hope that this portends advances in other government agencies, as well. The judiciary, for example, is in massive need of an overhaul on this scale. Each of the 13 federal courts of appeals have their own methods for publishing opinions on their web site, and it's often difficult to keep track of opinions published in each. Additionally, the 94 district courts also publish opinions, so it's difficult to get access to those, without paying for an aggregation service (Lexis or Westlaw). Justia does a good job, as well, but they only provide pdfs of the opinions. We're also familiar with the PACER data mining issues surrounding Aaron Swartz, so it's almost impossible to freely access and analyze all of that data. And then there are the state courts of last resort, intermediate appellate courts, and trial courts...each having their own way of publishing decisions. In short, it's often really difficult, if not efficiently impossible, to gain access to public records to perform high-level analyses on them. This is so unfortunate, because at our disposal right now are extremely powerful computers and amazingly robust algorithms that could perform really complex, revealing, and important analyses of litigated issues.