Timothy Franklin is the co-chair of ASNE's Freedom of Information Committee. He is editor and senior vice president of The Baltimore Sun. Reach him at tim.franklin@baltsun.com.

IMAGINE THAT YOU AND YOUR FAMILY are about to relocate across the country, moving from the punishing winters in Boston to the sunny calm of Los Angeles.

You'll not only be thinking about how to get rid of those old snow boots and the down coat you won't need anymore. You'll also be pondering more profound questions. Where are the communities that we can afford? Which neighborhoods have the lowest crime rates? Which schools have the highest academic achievement scores?

After you find the neighborhood of your dreams, you'll have even more basic questions. Are the streets safe for travel? Are any new developments being planned? Have there been any public health concerns in the area? Are there good, clean restaurants nearby?

Although the city of Los Angeles and other governments in the area post significant amounts of information online, you'll be lucky to find answers for all of your questions, because the data either isn't posted or it's hard to find.

But what if you could go to one easy-to-navigate Web site and get the answers? Shouldn't that one-stop-shopping site be the local newspaper?

Sound far-fetched? It shouldn't.

The ASNE Freedom of Information Committee has entered into partnership with the more-than-1,000-member Online News Association in an ambitious effort to get government information at all levels digitized, and to give newspapers the tools they need to make this information more accessible to their readers.

The dual goal is to help make newspaper Web sites even more essential to readers and to give the public greater access to information gathered and produced by its taxpayer-supported government.

“We're excited,” said Jonathan Dube, ONA president and director of Digital Media for Canada's CBC News. “It's an excellent way for news organizations to take advantage of the strengths of the Internet. The project will help all of us do a better job of serving the public.”

Indeed, giving readers access to databases of government information could be viewed as the ultimate public service. It also could provide a deep reservoir of information to help journalists do the kind of watchdog journalism that distinguishes news organizations and that is vital to their communities.

How, you ask, can ASNE and ONA help newspapers and their Web sites with this?

First, a newspaper can't publish data that it doesn't have.

So, the Freedom of Information Committee plans to focus its highly successful Sunshine Week public awareness campaign next March on the need for government officials to digitize their records and make them available to the public.

“Offering digital records as a Sunshine Week 2009 theme is a natural tie in with the ASNE/ONA project,” said Debra Gersh Hernandez, coordinator of Sunshine Week. “Participants will have an opportunity not only to discuss why electronic access to official records is important, but they also will be able to demonstrate how to obtain and use the information.”

In advance of Sunshine Week next spring, ASNE and ONA also hope to organize an audit of which state and local government records are available online.

Of course, getting government records in electronic form is only half the equation. There's also the matter of how to assemble those records so that the public can easily use them. The project will attempt to help editors and web producers on that front, too.

ASNE and ONA plan to build an online site as a tool kit for editors and Web producers. The site would include useful information on how to build reader-friendly, local databases of government information. The site also would include links to the best examples of online databases of public information.*