On the Records: Updates to the Salary Database

Today, we updated our most popular data feature, the Government Employee Salaries database. This update includes data from more than 25 different state and local agencies, refreshing salary entries for more than 200,000 listings in our app.

Included in this update are some of the largest employers in Texas, including the payrolls of the comptroller, the Department of Criminal Justice and the state Senate. There are also two new agencies: the Texas Juvenile Justice Department and the Frisco Independent School District.

But the biggest news about this update is that with it we begin a new and better updating process that will help us keep you abreast of the latest salary changes for employees in our database.

Historically, we’ve updated the salaries database in bulk. We would send out a batch of requests, compile and prepare what we received, and then shove it all out the door in one push. Each update made a big splash, but it took weeks of preparation to file the requests and field the responses.

This will be our last “big” update in this manner. Going forward, we will publish new data as we receive it. Not only will this work better for us and streamline the process, but it’ll work better for you. We’ll be able to get fresh data out to you as soon as possible.

As always, you can see the agencies with the most recent updates on our agency list page. And keep an eye out for a future update to the app that will make this list a bit more prominent.