At the CityCampSF Hackathon Dec. 10, attendees were frustrated to find no ability to access the complete database of local lobbyist activity hosted by the SF Ethics Commission without scraping the data. During the event, I made an email request to the director of the Commission for the full database, copying the innovations staff at the Department of Technology.

Flash forward to today, when the Ethics Commission announced that it was publishing an API to query the full database. Thanks to the Ethics Commission and its staff, and to Jay Nath and the Department of Technology for helping shepherd through the request. And thank you to Larry Bush and CitiReport for sponsoring a data challenge that uncovered the need for fuller access to the lobbyist database.