Click Here to Access the Civilian Oversight Agency Directory

The Civilian Oversight Agency Directory (COAD) is a web application, survey, and publicly available dataset containing several data points relating to various characteristics of civilian oversight agencies throughout the United States. The COAD was created to help stakeholders better understand the field of civilian oversight by attempting to systematically highlight variations in oversight authority, structure, resources, access to information, and many other features.

This application and its accompanying data were created as part of cooperative agreement number 2016-CK-WX-K017 awarded by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, U.S. Department of Justice.

About the COAD Survey

The COAD is based on survey data self-reported by participating civilian oversight agencies. The survey was first launched in 2017 and remains open for civilian oversight agencies to either add or update their responses. In total, the COAD survey asks 36 questions resulting in 63 variables relating to the organizational structure, resources, and authority of civilian oversight agencies.

Note that while NACOLE has taken several measures to ensure the accuracy and quality of the data, NACOLE cannot guarantee that each individual datapoint reflects the most up-to-date information for each oversight agency. Each survey response includes a date of when their entry was submitted or last updated. The dataset is also downloadable for members of the public to conduct their own analyses.

For those agencies wishing to take the survey, please click HERE. To see the full text of the survey in PDF format, click here. If you work for an oversight agency that has already responded and would like to update your information, please send an email to [email protected] for a custom link allowing you to modify your responses.