Data Liberation Project

MuckRock recently received a cache of records on slot machines located on U.S. military bases worldwide. This data comes from the Army Recreation Machine Program (ARMP), which currently operates 1,889 slot machines in 79 locations abroad and made $70.9 million from its slot machine operations during the 2024 fiscal year. The data currently exists as tabular information embedded in PDFs and has not been cleaned. The goal of this project is to extract the data from the PDFs, clean and standardize the fields, and build an initial exploratory experience that surfaces revenue and other key metrics by branch and region. This first pass is expected to generate follow‑up questions and further insights what this data can uncover. Cleaning and mapping this data could help explain which bases present the highest risk for military personnel with a gambling problem, what types of machines and games draw in the most money and why slot machines on American military bases have generated a steady increase of revenue since 2020.