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CPSR Newsletter Summer 1995
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1995 Issue--Table of Contents ]
Confidentiality and Availability of Public Information
by Dave Gowan
CPSR News Volume 13, Number 2: Summer 1995
Data are easily and cheaply provided to requesters these days. Many agencies use computer bulletin
board systems (BBSs), and many more are now developing Internet nodes that can distribute the same
information. Some agencies, with entrenched bureaucracies devoted to providing paper documents at
cost, and computer bureaucracies that have not yet emerged from the mainframe days of the 1960s,
maintain that the data they use are not available in PC formats, or on PC-compatible media. All this is
probably untrue. Almost all government data are maintained on computers, even most documents
described as "out of print." I was repeatedly told by the librarian of a major state agency that data I
needed were unavailable except as a multi-dollar printed document from their bookstore, yet with a
few calls I discovered the information on their mainframe database and found a staffer who willingly
sent it to me by modem at no cost.
Failures to provide requested data are usually merely policy, and not the result of hardware or
software limitations. Agency attorneys should advise management that the agency's best interests are
better served by sharing resources than making them difficult to obtain. Presently no Florida agency is
reaping the great public relations benefits that could be obtained by an open-information policy.
It is true that providing information on paper and nine-track tape are costly, but many times it seems
that these formats are deliberately used by agencies to discourage public information requests. In fact,
it is not at all difficult to export data from mainframes these days in ASCII format (which any PC
software can use) via BBS, Internet, or even a 3.5 inch diskette in the mail; if we consider the costs
involved, no agency should be allowed to distribute information otherwise.
The costs to governments of furnishing information on paper are so large, and the costs of providing
data electronically so small, that there is no good reason to use paper anymore. In fact, the expense of
merely assessing costs for providing data electronically are greater than the data delivery costs. Since
the work and expense involved in supplying data electronically are now so little, there's no excuse for
refusing to provide data on demand. Though the benefits of doing so may not be appreciated immediately,
they do accrue, most notably in the areas of good public relations and, eventually, media coverage.
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