Making Georgia's data usable

Who we are

Georgia Civic Data is an independent, nonpartisan, public-interest organization. We are not affiliated with the State of Georgia, the Department of Education, or any government agency or school district.

Our job is simple: take public information that already belongs to Georgians and make it easy to find and use. Everything we build is free.

We build two things. This site is our flagship, gathering Georgia’s public data in one place and letting you explore it four ways. We also build Georgia Homeroom, a separate product with its own brand: a plain-language guide for parents to what Georgia schools should teach, grade by grade.

What we do

Public data in Georgia is technically available, but rarely usable in practice:

• It is scattered. Datasets live on dozens of agency websites in inconsistent formats: PDFs, Excel files, and ad-hoc CSVs.
• It does not match. Column names, demographic categories, geography identifiers, and time conventions differ from one source to the next.
• It is hard to join. Combining datasets takes real data engineering before any analysis can even begin, and most people never get that far.

We do the slow part once, in the open: we gather this data, clean it, and get dozens of agencies to describe the same places, groups of people, dates, and fields the same way, so their datasets can finally be joined and queried together. The hard, valuable work is not hosting the files. It is that standardizing.

Standardization is the product. Everyone who uses the data, whether a policy analyst, a researcher, or a curious resident, starts with clean, ready-to-use data instead of wrangling raw source files. The platform is open source, so anyone can inspect how the data is produced.

Today the platform covers Georgia education data, with criminal justice next. Because every dataset labels places and groups of people the same way, you can join them with no custom setup, and soon that will reach across domains, like comparing education and criminal justice for the same county.

Four ways to explore the data

The same clean data is available four ways. Pick whichever fits how you work:

• Data Explorer. A point-and-click chart builder for guided, reproducible charts you can share and cite. Open Data Explorer.
• Data Talk. A plain-language chat that answers questions straight from the published data, with sources shown and charts on request. Ask Data Talk.
• API. Programmatic access to every cleaned dataset in JSON, CSV, or Parquet, for developers and analysts. See the API.
• MCP server. Connect Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini straight to Georgia data and ask questions inside the tools you already use. Connect the MCP server.

Other work: GovernmentReporter

Beyond our two Georgia products, we run one side project that reaches past the state. GovernmentReporter helps people find, read, and understand US federal government documents in plain English — Supreme Court opinions, executive orders, and Congressional bills — with no legal training required.

Get in touch

Questions, corrections, or ideas for datasets to add are all welcome. Email shane@georgiacivicdata.org.