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Quote of the Day
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
making local government more ethical
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Comments
donmc says:
Wed, 2008-10-01 16:09
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By far the most common strategy by Cities in response to a FOI request is to be painfully slow to respond to the request, and additionally to charge a fee per page/email etc. to avoid fishing expeditions...
What really needs to be addressed is the new world that has opened up when you consider the improvements in efficiency and ease of access to data that the changed technology landscape has brought forth in the last 5-10 years. Now, a city can easily deliver the entire email archive for a specific user or group of users with a few simple commands, and then load it onto a USB RAM stick (as an example). Such an activity might take 20 minutes to deliver onto the requester's USB storage device, so what charges are reasonable given that ease of access and delivery ?
I see technology as an increasingly important issue that is still avoided by many agencies in doing business. There needs to be continuous review of procedures, charges, and the time limits for response to FOI requests in many government jurisdictions.