Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) is a data gathering, data research and data distribution organization associated with Syracuse University. The purpose of TRAC is to provide the American people -- and institutions of oversight such as Congress, news organizations, public interest groups, businesses, scholars and lawyers -- with comprehensive information about federal staffing, spending, and the enforcement activities of the federal government. On a day-to-day basis, what are the agencies and prosecutors actually doing? Who are their employees and what are they paid? What do agency actions indicate about the priorities and practices of government? How do the activities of an agency or prosecutor in one community compare with those in a neighboring one or the nation as a whole? How have these activities changed over time? How does the record of one administration compare with the next? When the head of an agency or a district administrator changed, were there observable differences in actual enforcement priorities? When a new law was enacted or amended, what impact did it have on agency activities? Since 1996, TRAC has mounted and updated a series of specialized sites on the World Wide Web with highly detailed but easy-to-access information on selected federal enforcement agencies, special topical reports, and "snapshots" about federal expenditures, staffing and enforcement. The sites -- featuring colorful maps and graphs and tens of thousands of pages of tables and other supporting material -- are available without charge to anyone with access to the web. Currently featured are separate TRAC Web sites describing the enforcement activities and staffing patterns of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the U.S. Customs Service.