Web Integrity Project
The Web Integrity Project (WIP) monitors changes to government websites, holding the U.S. government accountable by revealing shifts in public information and access to web resources, as well as changes in stated policies and priorities.
WIP produces policy analyses to evaluate and recommend changes to web governance practices and ensure equitable public access to valuable web resources, focusing on social and racial justice. WIP works with researchers and members of civil society to uncover web censorship and collaborates with journalists to make its findings public — please contact us (andrewbergman@g.harvard.edu) to learn more.
Founded in February 2018 at the Sunlight Foundation by Rachel Bergman, Andrew Bergman, and Toly Rinberg, WIP builds on the collective work that our co-founders helped lead to uncover systematic dismantling of climate web resources. WIP spotlights censorship of public information, such as the Trump administration’s systematic removal of information about the Affordable Care Act and the erasure of language pertaining to sex discrimination protections. This work is done through a combination of digital investigative methods, including by using software to monitor changes to federal websites, in partnership with volunteers and collaborating researchers.
WIP also conducts data integrity investigations into databases and public information repositories that have been undermined and, in several high-profile cases, entirely dismantled and shut down. These include uncovering errors within ICE’s Detainee Locator System, which resulted in detainees’ access to the judicial system being undermined, and the shutdown of the National Guideline Clearinghouse database, a database for doctors, with 200,000 monthly visits, that went dark without any archive.
In collaboration with Harvard's Cyberlaw Clinic, WIP also explores legal strategies to protect access to public information and develops policy mechanisms to create more equitable and just web governance. WIP also files Freedom of Information Act requests to support its investigations, as well as to go beyond government actor’s digital footprints and uncover the underlying reasons behind web censorship cases. WIP’s findings have served as the subject for numerous House and Senate Congressional oversight letters and hearings.
