Investigative Journalism

Government agencies are required to have an open government/transparency portion of their site that lists, among other information, information about their employees. A number of state and local governments have not officially published employee data, but a good place to start is by searching the government’s website and looking for a link for open government or transparency or doing a search for open government, employee data, or transparency.

FedScope: A tool under the Office of Personnel Management Government that allows you to search federal employees. Employee information includes:

• General employment info
• Accessions: number of agency individual and mass transfer-ins and new hires for Senior Executive Service positions
• Separations: number of agency individual and mass transfer-outs, quits, retirements, reductions in force, termination or removal, and deaths from Federal Civil Service
• Employment trends for the last 5 years and the last 5 quarters
• Diversity: data using Ethnicity and Race Indicator

Federal Employee Salary Search Presents payroll data for about 1.3 million federal employees. The list contains most executive branch employees; excluded are the White House, Congress, the Postal Service, independent agencies and commissions, and employees in jobs essential to national security. The data covers base pay and bonuses, but not overtime.

Government Employment & Payroll: U.S. Census Reports that provide statistics on the number of federal, state, and local government civilian employees and their gross payrolls dating back to 1992. Also provides a tool called Build-A-Table which allows you to customize your own data set table.

USA.gov: Provides the contact information of elected officials, including federal, state, and local elected leaders.

Indiana Transparency Portal: Provides the number of state government employees in each agency, the number of state government employees over time, employment trends, and salary information by agency or name.

IN.gov Find a Person: To find out Indiana state government employee titles and contact info, use the state governmen’s Find a Person feature. Search by name and agency or conduct a reverse phone search, depending on the information available to you during your research.

Indiana State Employee Handbook: The state of Indiana Employee Handbook is provided only as a resource summarizing the personnel policies and procedures for the employment relationship between the state and its employees.

Indiana Gateway for Government Units: Provides state employee data on a municipal level. A great range of employee information can be found on this site including:

• The Certified Report of Names, Addresses, Duties and Compensation of Public Employees (Form 100R) provides taxpayers with compensation information for public employees of state government, state universities, state boards and commissions, and all local units of government.
• Provides information on public employees including employee name, department, business address, job title, and compensation
• Provides access to the following reports:
  • Employee Compensation: View employee compensation by unit
  • 100R Additional Information:Find out which units have a nepotism policy, contracting policy and if they provide health, pension or other benefits.
  • Contracting and Nepotism Policies: View Contracting and Nepotism Policies required per IC 36-1-20.2 and IC 36-1-21 for counties, cities, towns and townships.
  • 100R Submission Log: Find out which units have submitted their employee compensation data