Trust and transparency
Data and editorial methodology
Go Vermont is an independent civic information project, not a government website. Our job is to make official information easier to find without making it look more certain or complete than it is.
Current experiment
Detailed civic coverage is being tested in 8 configured municipalities: Waterbury, Montpelier, Brattleboro, Bennington, Newport, Middlebury, Winooski, Hartford. The current snapshot contains 16 published civic items. Coverage outside that pilot is broader for officials and basic municipality pages, but it is not the same as a complete local civic feed.
The current pilot snapshot was checked between Aug 25, 2026, 8:07 PM and Aug 25, 2026, 8:07 PM. Those are source-check times, not the time this page was opened.
What becomes a public fact
Start with the owner
We prefer the municipality, Vermont state agency, clerk, board, or other government body that owns the fact.
Capture exact evidence
A published pilot item carries the official URL, source owner, captured supporting text, retrieval time, and a content fingerprint.
Validate deterministically
Code checks approved origins and paths, redirects, dates, names, amounts, freshness, evidence coverage, duplicates, and required fields before publication.
Preserve uncertainty
A missing, blocked, conflicting, or ambiguous source does not become a guessed value. Existing information is not deleted merely because a page fails to load.
Keep a rollback
The public snapshot is committed to Git. A failed refresh leaves the last verified snapshot in place, and every release can be restored from its reviewed commit.
Automation and summaries
Automated tools may help locate source text and prepare a candidate. They do not get authority to invent or silently publish civic facts. Automated summaries are limited, visibly labeled on the record, and mapped back to captured evidence. If a summary and the official source disagree, the source controls and the item is corrected or withheld.
Freshness and completeness
Every record has its own freshness state. Site response time is never presented as the time the underlying fact was verified. Empty sections are hidden, and a missing tax rate, fee, meeting outcome, vote, deadline, or officeholder remains explicitly unavailable. The linked government source remains the authority for legally binding information.
Corrections
Residents and officials can report an error. A correction is a review input, not an automatic overwrite. Reports are checked against official sources, and public records keep their source and verification history.
Editorial and revenue firewall
Go Vermont is non-partisan. Sponsors and advertisers cannot buy a factual change, preferred ranking, source approval, favorable coverage, or removal of accurate civic information. Paid material must be distinguishable from civic content. Advertising is never placed inside Action Assist, private communications, forms, or controls where it could be confused with an official action.