Pete Weitzel is a former managing editor of The Miami Herald and a member of ASNE's FOI committee. Debra Gersh Hernandez is the Sunshine Week coordinator.
WHAT'S IN YOUR COMPUTER? Or not?
That's the question we'd like you to ask this Sunshine Week.
In the course of governing, federal, state and local agencies collect an incredible array of information that can tell us much about how we live our lives and run our businesses and deal with the problems of society. They also keep extensive records that reveal how efficiently and effectively they go about their task of making our communities better places to live.
But many do not willingly or easily share that information. They resist transparency. And they relish the practical obscurity of dusty paper files, available only at a single office or records warehouse. Too many make little - if any - effort to make those records accessible online, let alone easily searchable.
The Sunshine potential of the Internet is moving the fight for government transparency to the electronic front, not only as governments are urged to put more information online, but also as newspapers strengthen their role as community information resources by finding find new ways to present that information to readers in easy-to-use, reliable formats.
To get ahead of this trend, ASNE's Freedom of Information Committee has launched a multiyear effort to turn more of those documents into truly public records, readily accessible to anyone online. The first phase of the Data on Demand project aims at the upcoming Sunshine Week, March 15-21.
"Digitizing public records is the natural next battlefront in the fight for greater transparency," said Andy Alexander, co-chair of the FOI committee. "It's not only good for society, but it also can be good for newspapers if they can position their Web sites to be the gateway for readers to access this data."
The committee's goal for this Sunshine Week is to lay the groundwork for a national campaign to encourage governments at all levels to increase the digitization of public records. Working with the National Freedom of Information Coalition, the Society of Professional Journalists and the Online News Association, ASNE's FOI committee and Sunshine Week coordinators are surveying records to find out which are already available and exploring ways to help news organizations make even greater use of public records databases online.
Many news organizations now compile public records information or link directly to government databases in ways that smartly complement the news and expand readers' knowledge of their communities. Crime maps that let people know of incidents in their neighborhood and report cards and other comparative data on schools are among the most popular features. And in these days of failing real-estate markets, readers in many communities can go to newspaper Web sites to find recent home sales, foreclosures and even subprime mortgages mapped.
The ASNE Sunshine Week team is asking editors across the country, working with their government reporters and IT staff, to survey the online availability of local government records and to publish special Sunshine Week reports about what public records information is available online from city and county governments and school boards, and what isn't. At the same time, NFOIC and SPJ will be working with ASNE to survey state agency records. The results of those state surveys and a national overview will be available, embargoed in advance to participating newspapers for inclusion in the Sunshine Week special reports, and will be posted on the Sunshine Week Web site, www.sunshineweek.org, as the week kicks off.
Meanwhile, a separate FOI subcommittee is reviewing newspaper Web sites across the country to see how they use public records databases and how they present that information to readers.
Many of those database pages have proved quite popular with readers, drawing high traffic. Some news organizations have linked the public records data with investigative reports or breaking news stories. And they've provided a depth of consumer information, ranging from restaurant, nursing home and hospital inspections to disciplinary actions taken against attorneys and other professionals to consumer product safety recalls.
The FOI committee's efforts after Sunshine Week and into 2010 will turn to the campaign to persuade governments to digitize important public records that the Sunshine Week survey shows aren't generally available online. That campaign will emphasize not only the enhanced accountability benefits of transparency, but also the more practical budget payback.
Said Alexander, "In this period when government financial resources are stretched, digitizing public records will save money by freeing up government employees who must otherwise process Freedom of Information requests. And it makes getting information so much easier for citizens who want to know more about or from their government." *