Small City To Make Data Accessible Online

The City of Jackson, MI  (population approximately 33,500) has teamed up with the University of Michigan and the Sunlight Foundation to establish an open data portal online similar to the one pioneered by the City of South Bend, IN last year. The Jackson Chamber of Commerce has joined in the effort.
  

The new system is expected to benefit residents and businesses alike by simplifying and speeding up information acquisition and reducing the cost of acquisition.  City government will achieve more efficient inter-departmental data sharing, as well.

Making vast amounts of information accessible online reduces substantially the costs to the city of responding to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.  (The city would continue to expend employee hours redacting partially exempt records, for which information seekers could be billed.)

Dr. Clifford Lampe of U-M's School of Information leads the university's contingent in the collaboration.  “He researches the social and technical structures of large scale technology mediated communication...” and “...has also been involved in the creation of multiple social media and online community projects...”

Last year, Lampe told Jackson Citizen Patriot reporter Will Forgrave that  “the three-year project will have graduate students develop mobile and social media apps designed to streamline communication between Jackson citizens and their leaders.”

As the software gets better and more widely applied year by year, the cost will come down, putting the technology within reach of even smaller communities.  Municipal budget planners should take a close look at this kind of cost-cutting innovation.

A Case of Extreme FOIA Abuses & the Solution

After receiving hundreds of requests for records under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from a resident, Kim Orlich, city officials in Belding, MI, northeast of Grand Rapids, were exasperated.  Searches for records and hearing appeals in response to Orlich’s requests were consuming huge amounts of time, distracting staff and city council from other business, at no small expense to the community’s budget.

Belding officials discovered that a warrant had been issued for Orlich’s arrest in a civil debt case pending in St. Ignace, just the other side of the Mackinac Bridge.  Belding police volunteered to deliver Orlich free of charge, after authorities in St. Ignace declined to drive down to pick her up.

With Orlich in jail, Belding officials theorized, they could deny her most recent requests because the city had no duty under state law to meet the requests of an inmate.

The point of this post is not to insist that Orlich had every right to seek all the information she wished, nor to criticize Orlich for being a nuisance, nor accuse her of harassment.

The point of this post is not to charge the City of Belding with retaliation, nor to accuse it of abuse of process or violation of Orlich’s civil rights.

The point of this post is that technology is available today to post all non-exempt government records online in easily searchable archives the instant the records are created or acquired.  It’s called proactive disclosure or open data, and it’s being practiced all over the country, at the federal level and in state agencies and municipalities, large and small.  The information seeker simply goes to the government’s website and follows the prompts.  Unless a question of exemption comes up, the public can view and copy records for free without distracting any government employee from his or her work. 

Public officials, please explore these opportunities.  Government at all levels should make the information we all paid for available to us online, directly and easily accessible and without cost to either the information seeker or the government.

No More Excuses on FOIA Reform

I just read an editorial dated February 9, 2014 with the caption, "No more excuses on FOIA reform."  Here are a few excerpts:

"[A state legislator] said the bill will establish uniformity in charges to the public, including copying. There have been instances where citizens attempting to ferret out public information have been presented bills for thousands of dollars to make copies."

"Indeed, some governments require an FOIA request for the most mundane information - information that should be readily available to the public online. In those instances the FOIA is being used by pettifoggers to thwart the spirit of open government."

"As public officials, legislators should be committed to transparency in government."

"To that end, accountability starts with a strong Freedom of Information Act."

"One with teeth."

OK, so the editorial was in the Charleston, SC, Post and Courier.  You didn't really expect to see language like that in a Michigan newspaper, did you?