Verification Criteria
Before adding any source to Civic Sonar, we verify that it meets all of the following criteria:
1. Official Government Domain
The source must be hosted on an official government domain (e.g., .gov, .gov.uk, .gc.ca, .gouv.fr) or a recognized international organization domain.
2. Machine-Readable Format
The source must provide data in a standardized, machine-readable format such as RSS, Atom, CAP (Common Alerting Protocol), or official API. We do not scrape HTML content.
3. Public Accessibility
The feed must be publicly accessible without requiring authentication, login, or cookies. This ensures we're accessing public information intended for distribution.
4. Institutional Authority
The issuing organization must have official authority to issue the type of alerts being published (e.g., meteorological services for weather, emergency management agencies for safety alerts).
What We Do NOT Include
- User-generated content or social media posts
- News articles or media reports about alerts
- Unofficial aggregators or third-party compilations
- Private company announcements (unless officially mandated)
- Scraped HTML content from websites
Ongoing Monitoring
We continuously monitor feed health and data quality. Sources that become unavailable, change format, or show signs of compromise are automatically flagged and reviewed.