PAID — Public Access Information Dividend · A Quigley Group initiative · Full disclosurePaid by bots$0.0000· 0 views
PPAIDPublic Access Information Dividend
Three tools, one page

Estimate. Assess.
Decide.

These interactive tools translate the research into numbers you can use. Project potential revenue from a paid API, score your municipality’s readiness across five dimensions, and pick the ordinance version that matches your risk tolerance. All calculations are deliberately conservative and grounded in the economic models, playbook, and model ordinance.

Revenue Calculator →Readiness Self-Assessment
What these tools will not do
  • Predict actual revenue — too many unknowns.
  • Replace a conversation with your municipal attorney.
  • Substitute for COOG consultation or board review.
  • Make a go/no-go decision for you.
Interactive Tools03 tools

Revenue Calculator

Tool 01 · Estimates only

Adjust the sliders to model your municipality. The calculator runs all three pricing models and shows the comparison below.

Municipality population25,000
Used for context. Revenue is driven by bot volume, not population directly.
Public datasets available15
More machine-readable datasets = more reason for bots to register and pay.
Estimated daily bot requests25,000 / day
Commercial bots only (exclude search engines like Googlebot). Check your Cloudflare/WAF analytics.
Pricing model
Annual revenue estimate · Modest fee ($0.001/call)
$450
Based on 25,000 daily bot requests × 30 days × $0.001 × 60% commercial share.
Comparison — all three models
Cost recovery only$375
Modest feeselected$450
Commercial tier$8,250
Conservative note

This is a rough estimate. Actual revenue depends on how many crawlers register vs. simply slowing down their scraping or switching to FOIL requests. The economic research flags revenue could be near-zero if bots shift to FOIL instead of paying. See the research paper for assumptions.

Readiness Self-Assessment

Tool 02 · 5 dimensions

Score each dimension 1–5 based on the playbook’s Pre-Implementation Assessment. Be honest — over-scoring leads to a program that fails in practice. Your total updates live.

Data Maturity
Is your data inventoried and machine-readable (CSV/JSON), or stuck in PDFs and paper?
1: No inventory. All data in PDFs and HTML. No one owns the data.5: Complete inventory. 10+ datasets as clean CSV/JSON/GeoJSON with metadata and stewards.
Technical Infrastructure
Do you have IT staff and hosting that can run an API gateway and bot management layer?
1: No IT staff. Vendor-hosted site with no config access. No CDN.5: Full IT team. Cloud-hosted, behind a CDN, experienced running APIs and gateways.
Legal Readiness
Has your municipal attorney reviewed the model ordinance and consulted COOG?
1: No attorney review. No awareness of the FOIL/home rule distinction.5: Ordinance drafted and reviewed. COOG opinion obtained. Open questions addressed in writing.
Political Readiness
Does the board support this, and is there public tolerance — not a 'paywalling records' backlash?
1: No board awareness. No public discussion. Hostile or indifferent environment.5: Board passed a resolution. Stakeholders engaged. Dedicated-revenue commitment in draft.
Financial Readiness
Can you fund Phase 1 setup before any fee revenue arrives (it may be zero in year one)?
1: No budget for setup. No capacity to absorb ongoing costs. No revenue mechanism.5: Fully funded. Dedicated fund enacted. FOIL-cost-shift mitigation plan in place.
Total score
0 / 25
Verdict

Not ready yet — start with data organization (see the Data Guide).

Ordinance Version Selector

Tool 03 · Version A vs B

Answer four questions. The selector recommends Version A (cost-recovery, lower legal risk) or Version B (revenue model, higher legal risk). When in doubt, the model ordinance itself says: adopt Version A.

Is this your first data access program?
Has your municipal attorney reviewed the home rule authority argument?
Do you need the revenue to fund the program?
Is there political appetite for charging above cost?
0 / 4 answered

Answer all four questions to see a recommendation.

Decision logic: first program (Q1=Yes) or no attorney sign-off (Q2=No) or no political appetite (Q4=No) → Version A. All favor B → Version B, with a caution to still consider A first.
Disclaimer

Estimates are illustrative, not guarantees. See the research paper for assumptions and methodology. Realistic net revenue for a small/medium NY municipality is $0–$40,000/year after program costs — enough to fund infrastructure, not balance a budget. This toolkit is informational research, not legal advice.