Data Sources
Where FoglineSF's numbers come from. A curated starting point for SF civic data: city portals, elections, transit, housing, crime, and economy.
City Operations & Government
- DataSF City and County of San Francisco's open data portal. The starting point for most civic datasets.
- SF Legistar Official legislation, meeting agendas, and hearing records for the Board of Supervisors.
- SF Controller Budget, audits, and citywide performance reporting.
- SF Ethics Commission Local campaign finance, lobbyist registrations, and ethics disclosures.
- SF Board of Supervisors Members, committee assignments, district boundaries, and meeting calendars.
- SF Treasurer & Tax Collector Business tax data, investment portfolio reports, and city revenue statistics.
State & Federal Government
- Office of the Governor of California Executive orders, appointments, and state-level policy announcements.
- California Legislative Information Full text of state bills, statutes, and legislative calendars.
Elections & Politics
- SF Department of Elections Official San Francisco election results and candidate filings.
- SF Elections Portal Voter tools, ballot measures, and results portal from the Department of Elections.
- Ballotpedia Nonpartisan encyclopedia of candidates, ballot measures, and elected officials nationwide.
- Cal-Access California Secretary of State's campaign finance and lobbying disclosures.
- OpenSecrets Federal campaign finance data: contributions, PACs, and lobbying.
- Federal Election Commission Candidate filings, PAC registrations, independent expenditure reports, and enforcement actions.
- FEC Open Data API Developer API for all FEC campaign finance data, useful for scripted analysis.
Transit & Infrastructure
- SFMTA Muni ridership, on-time performance, and transit planning reports.
- BART Reports & Statistics Ridership, on-time performance, and capital planning.
- MTC Vital Signs Regional transportation, housing, and equity metrics for the nine-county Bay Area.
- 511.org Unified Bay Area transit, traffic, and commuter data.
Housing & Property
- SF Planning Department Planning applications, zoning maps, and area plans.
- SF Assessor-Recorder Property records, assessed values, and recorded documents.
- HUD User Datasets Federal housing data: Fair Market Rents, AFFH, Picture of Subsidized Households.
Utilities & Environment
- SF Public Utilities Commission Water, wastewater, and Hetch Hetchy power system reporting for San Francisco.
- CleanPowerSF San Francisco's community choice energy provider: enrollment, generation mix, and rate data.
- California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Primary utilities regulator. Rate cases, wildfire mitigation plans, safety incident reports, and every PG&E filing.
- PG&E Real-time outage maps, sustainability reports, and rate schedules. Researcher data access via pge-energydatarequest.com.
- US Energy Information Administration (EIA) Federal energy data. Utility-level retail sales (Form 861), plant-level generation (Form 923), and long-run electricity statistics.
- CAL FIRE California wildfire agency. Incident data, damage assessments, and perimeters. Context for PSPS events and utility-caused ignitions.
Crime & Public Safety
- SFPD Incident Reports (DataSF) Daily-updated police incident reports, downloadable as CSV. The most useful SFPD dataset for analysis.
- CA DOJ OpenJustice California statewide criminal justice, arrest, and use-of-force data.
Demographics & Economy
- US Census Bureau American Community Survey and decennial census: demographic and economic data by tract, ZIP, and city.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, California Employment, wages, and CPI inflation for the San Francisco MSA.
- BEA Regional Data Personal income, GDP, and industry output at metro and county level.
Research & Archives
- San Francisco Public Library Historical archives, newspaper databases, and subscription research tools, all free with a library card.
- Internet Archive Wayback Machine for historical versions of government websites, plus books, media, and public datasets.