What we are building next

Development Roadmap

Planned website features and future data automation. Priorities may change as sources and requirements are validated.

Last updated: October 24, 2026. Planning document; not a claim that proposed features are implemented.

Shipped

Compare presidential administrations using historical statistics and documented sources.
Automated unemployment (FRED), inflation/CPI (FRED), and real GDP (FRED) imports.
Automated provisional current presidential approval polling, with source-level audit records and separate historical Gallup summaries.
Data Freshness reporting, including economic importer checks and presidential approval importer check timestamps.
External feedback board linked from the homepage and footer for data corrections, bugs, and feature suggestions.

Planned product enhancements

Priority	Feature	Scope
P1	Head-to-head administration comparison	Choose two administrations; side-by-side metrics, source context, and shareable URLs.
P1	Interactive historical charts	Time-series views with administration boundaries, source dates, and event context.
P2	Shareable comparison cards	Export graphics with definitions, periods, attribution, and limitations.
P2	Visual rankings	Rank by a specific statistic, not a subjective overall presidential score; distinguish incomplete terms.
P2	CSV exports	Export underlying observations with source and date metadata.
P2	Historical event overlays	Recessions, wars, pandemics, and other documented events on charts.
P3	Additional indicators	Evaluate wages, poverty, homeownership, markets, energy prices, etc. individually for reliable sources.
P3	Data corrections and feedback workflow	Triage external feedback submissions and verify reported data issues against primary sources before making corrections.

Remaining data-import automation

Existing historical data must not be silently overwritten or mixed with differently defined series. Each importer should first validate the source, provide a read-only preview, add tests, store observation-level provenance, handle revisions safely, report run status on Data Freshness, and be verified manually before enabling a scheduled workflow.

Priority	Dataset	Candidate primary source	Frequency / cautions
P1	National debt	U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data — Debt to the Penny	Daily availability; distinguish debt outstanding from debt held by public; administration start/end attribution must be explicit.
P1	Federal deficit / surplus	U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data — Monthly Treasury Statement	Monthly; preserve fiscal-year versus calendar-year and rolling-12-month definitions.
P2	Median household income	U.S. Census Bureau	Annual; preserve inflation-adjusted versus nominal dollars, methodology changes, and survey-year attribution.
P2	Immigration: removals and returns	DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics	As official data is released; distinguish removals from returns and fiscal years from calendar years.
P2	Immigration: lawful permanent residents	DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics	Typically annual; document reporting lags and fiscal-year coverage.
P2	Immigration: refugee admissions	DHS / State Department official statistics	Typically annual; preserve refugee fiscal-year definitions and partial years.
P2	Defense spending	OMB Historical Tables / other official federal budget outlay series	Annual; define national defense outlays versus budget authority and inflation adjustments.
P3	Other existing manually curated statistics	Evaluate individually	Identify exact existing site columns and their authoritative series before implementation.
Maintenance	Historical Gallup approval summaries	Gallup historical presidential approval publications	Keep as published historical summaries; do not replace with the provisional current multi-pollster series.

Proposed automation sequence

Treasury phase: debt observations, then monthly deficit/surplus; reuse the existing guarded importer and audit conventions.
Annual economic phase: household income and defense outlays, with careful price-level and fiscal-year treatment.
Immigration phase: removals/returns, lawful permanent residents, and refugee admissions as separate official datasets.
Coverage audit: reconcile all remaining visible columns against automated feeds, documented manual sources, and gaps.

Definition of done for each automated dataset

Source URL, series identifier, units, period definition, and methodology documented.
Read-only preview and sanity checks verified against official source data.
Tests cover missing, stale, duplicate, revised, and incomplete observations.
Database migration and safe importer applied and tested.
Data Freshness shows observation date and separate last-check timestamp/status.
Website display reviewed; incomplete administrations clearly labeled.
Scheduled workflow tested on dev and merged to main only after approval.

Roadmap maintenance rule

For every future feature or data-import change, update this roadmap in the same development pull request: move completed work to Shipped, remove or revise its planned entry, and adjust priorities or status where needed. Keep the public roadmap accurate before merging to main; do not mark work complete until it has been implemented and verified. The website's /roadmap page renders this document at build time.