Standards
How CIVWATCH decides what to show, what to call it, and where it came from. These rules apply to the application, its pillars and this site.
Status words
Each feature carries exactly one of these words. A feature moves up only when it meets the definition, not when the code for it exists.
- Live
- Exposed to the public and usable today.
- Available
- Built and connected to the system of record, reachable inside a live service.
- In progress
- Being built now. Parts may work; the feature as described does not yet.
- Planned
- Decided on and not started, or only scaffolded.
- Reference
- Kept open for its code and history. Not presented as a running feature.
Declared and observed
Declared status is what the project says about a feature. Observed status is what a server returned when it was checked. The status page shows both for every public URL. When they disagree, the observed result is the one to trust, and the declared status gets corrected.
Provenance
- Records keep the public URL they came from and the time they were retrieved.
- When a source is down or a key is missing, the interface says the source is unavailable. It does not substitute sample numbers.
- Sample data used for demonstrations is labeled as sample. No synthetic record is presented as live evidence.
- When document extraction ships, every fact pulled from a contract or policy must cite the page and passage it came from and be confirmed by a person before it is published.
Sources
Only public-record sources are used. Nothing is collected from behind a login, and every source is cited where its data appears.
Wired into the CIVWATCH web app
- U.S. Census Geocoder for place, county, state and district lookups
- DeFlock community map of license-plate reader locations
- USAspending for federal awards
- SEC EDGAR for company filings
- Federal Register for federal rules and notices
Wired, waiting on API keys
- Congress.gov API for federal legislation
- FOIA.gov API for agency FOIA contacts and reports
The status page shows which of these respond right now.
Accuracy
A mapped camera is a report, not a confirmation. Community maps show where a device was seen and reported; a device can be moved, removed or misidentified. CIVWATCH shows where each location came from so you can judge it.
Contract amounts, terms and votes are shown as the public record states them, linked to that record.
Corrections
To report a wrong record or a broken source, open an issue on the web app repository with the page link and what you believe is correct. The longer policy is in the ethics charter.
Report security vulnerabilities privately through the repository's Security tab, as described in the security policy.
Attribution and ownership
CIVWATCH, including the web app, Cell Monitor, Globe and Platform, is designed, built and maintained by Curtis Charles Farrar, published as POWDER-RANGER (ORCID 0009-0008-9273-2458). The work is self-funded and released under the MIT license.
The CIVWATCH Globe runs a configured instance of God's Eye View, an open-source project by Bilawal Sidhu. Its core authorship remains with that project.