Consent of the governed- part 1: Nefarious plans for transparency
My first thoughts when hearing the $70,000 bill for the FOIA inquiries via recent video from councilman Aaron Kirkpatrick, City Council Ward 4 was 'this system sounds horrendously inefficient!' I deal with large data queries on the regular. If I cost my company that much to do routine inquiries of data at scale, I'd be rightly chastised if not summarily fired.
I hope it is the case that this complaint then is about the FOIA system being onerous to use (for both sides) rather than citizens exercising their rights to morally and lawfully inquire of the government they pay for.
I suspect much of the cross-talk and anger is because perspectives are opposite. From the council's side, they already have all the information- being key operators in the normal processes of city business. From the outside looking in, city processes can be an opaque block, with informal questions being perfunctorily answered with emphasis on brevity rather than exhaustive documentation. We are all understandably busy with life and I don't fault anyone for being brief.
To those citizens wanting more information, FOIA forms, which require a lot of specificity, are the only way to get close to complete answers. Should that specificity fall outside of the desired information, well, the process must be done again to try to properly capture the boundaries around the info being searched. Frankly, this wastes everyone's time.
What can appear malicious is rather 'this search did not answer my question.. now I must search again'. The solution to which is 'help people answer their questions the first go-around.' Ideally with minimal city input or hand-holding if it can be managed, unless the City Manager decides it's worthwhile for a dedicated person.
I wonder if there is a way to have a more transparent system where FOIAs aren't even required, because the system is naturally open for public view (with restricted information redacted) in a lawfully compliant manner. I should like very much for whomever is the next City Manager to have that as a goal.
Note: Because councilman Aaron Kirkpatrick, City Council Ward 4 brought up a lot of issues, I thought I'd break out responses into smaller chunks because I am too wordy (sorry!). I want to give his criticisms appropriate thoughtful consideration, because they are important.
p.s. I don't have a top hat, but I wish I did.
p.p.s. this is meant to make fun of myself, not anyone else. thanks for your attention to this matter