OpenData Labs

Engineering insights and technical deep dives from the OpenData team.

OpenChart Is Now Open Source

The charting library behind OpenData's visualizations is now free and open source. Specs-driven, headless, framework-agnostic, and built for publication-quality output.

Riley Hilliard·Mar 25, 2026·6 min

Report

Florida Already Answered the Voucher Question

Texas just launched a $1 billion school voucher program modeled on Florida's. Two full years of Florida data show what comes next: enrollment cliffs, school closures, billions diverted, and no way to measure whether it worked. Here's what Austin ISD parents should expect.

Riley Hilliard·Apr 24, 2026·20 min

Report

What Vouchers Will Cost Austin ISD

274,000 Texas families applied for school vouchers. Florida's two-year data shows what comes next for Austin ISD: enrollment cliffs, a growing deficit, and no way to measure if it worked.

Riley Hilliard·Apr 24, 2026·10 min

Report

The $47 Drug That Costs $10,000: How Middlemen Inflate American Healthcare

The same generic leukemia pill costs $47 at Cost Plus Drugs and over $10,000 through traditional channels. The difference isn't chemistry. It's every company that touches the drug between the factory and the patient.

Riley Hilliard·Apr 19, 2026·17 min

Data EngineeringOpen Data

93 Datasets, 22 Sources, One API Call

The US spends $5.3 trillion a year on healthcare. The data describing that spending is scattered across CMS, CDC, FDA, and dozens of other agencies, each with its own format. Here's what happens when you put it all in one place.

Riley Hilliard·Apr 18, 2026·11 min

Open Data

The Variance Is the Story

CDC WONDER suppresses your county data. CMS gives you 328,000 rows with cryptic headers. You have four days. Here's what happens when you put both datasets in one place.

Riley Hilliard·Apr 18, 2026·9 min

Open Data

5 Agencies, 3 Joins, One District Brief

Campaign data teams need district-level numbers under deadline. The federal data is free. Getting it into one spreadsheet still takes longer than the analysis. Here's what happens when you put it all in one place.

Riley Hilliard·Apr 16, 2026·11 min

Report

Following the Money: How Austin ISD Ended Up $181 Million Short

Austin ISD faces a $181 million deficit while property values have tripled, the state's rainy day fund has doubled to $23 billion, and the per-student allotment has barely budged in seven years even after HB2. This report traces the dollars through recapture, charter growth, and flat state funding to show how the system works and where the pressure comes from.

Riley Hilliard·Apr 10, 2026·20 min

Report

The Students Left Behind: Charter Growth and the Hollowing Out of Texas Public Schools

Texas charter enrollment has grown 40-fold since 1998. Traditional districts are losing students by the tens of thousands. The students who remain are poorer, more likely to drop out, and scoring worse on national tests. And we can only measure half the exodus.

Riley Hilliard·Apr 9, 2026·12 min

Report

11,654 Lines of Beyonce: What Her Lyrics Reveal When You Count Every Word

A computational dissection of Beyonce's entire lyric catalog reveals a songwriter who lives in the present tense, builds songs from just two pronouns, and uses repetition as precision engineering.

Riley Hilliard·Apr 4, 2026·12 min

Data Engineering

Remix as a Middle Layer: Patterns from Production

Your Remix server isn't just a view layer. Here's how we use React Router v7 as a reverse proxy, data orchestrator, SEO engine, and boot loader between the browser and a Python API.

Riley Hilliard·Mar 31, 2026·12 min

Data Engineering

Designing an API for LLMs, Not Humans

We asked Claude to research US healthcare costs using OpenData. It made 72 API calls. Three rounds of agent-driven feedback later, it takes 8. Here's what we changed and what we learned about API design when your primary consumer is an LLM.

Riley Hilliard·Mar 29, 2026·10 min

Visualization

Why Your Charts Don't Get Shared (And Chartr's Do)

Chartr grew to 500K+ subscribers by making data visualization shareable. What they figured out about headline-first framing, minimal chrome, and social optimization applies to anyone making charts.

James Freedman·Mar 26, 2026·8 min

Report

The American Dream Now Costs Three Times What It Used To

Housing, healthcare, and college tuition now consume roughly three times the share of income they did in 1984. The middle-class math no longer works.

Riley Hilliard·Mar 24, 2026·14 min

VisualizationOpen Source

Using Claude as a Logo Design Agency

We built a Claude Code skill that turns Claude into a surprisingly good logo designer. It brainstorms visual metaphors, iterates on feedback, and outputs production-quality SVG design.

Riley Hilliard·Mar 14, 2026·5 min

Data EngineeringOpen Data

28 Years, 14 Formats, One API Call

We spent a couple days untangling 28 years of Illinois school data so that nobody else has to. This is what OpenData is building, and why it matters.

Riley Hilliard·Mar 12, 2026·12 min

Open DataReport

One in Four Illinois Students Is Chronically Absent. It's Getting Worse.

Eight years of Illinois Report Card data, cross-referenced with national test scores and Census poverty estimates, reveals a chronic absence crisis that COVID accelerated but likely didn't start.

Riley Hilliard·Mar 10, 2026·12 min