Hello and welcome to my new blog.
One of my passions is open government and I enjoy making public records requests, so I decided to share my adventures with you here on this site.
I was lucky when I started as a reporter at the New Jersey Herald that I had someone show me the ropes (Seth Augenstein) but have had to learn a whole to new skill set with all the federal entities in Monterey.
New Jersey's Open Public Records Act is one of the most progressive public records laws in the country, allowing people to get an answer in seven days. I even wrote this story for its 10th birthday.
California's law is pretty weak in comparison. A public entity has a maximum of 24 days to release records, give a date for their release or explain what exemption allows them not to release it.
That brings me to the big, bad Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA. I've thought up some better names for it: Frowned on Instantaneously Act, Forgot or Ignored Act, Free-reign on Information Abolishing, Fallacy of Information Assumption. You get the point.
I actually find filing FOIAs really easy. You just go to FOIA.gov, click on "FOIA Contacts" at the top of the page and scroll down to the department you want. The problem is it can take months to get a response and you need to call and harass them.
There's a recent Kickstarter campaign for something to make FOIA requests easier. It is called the "FOIA Machine" and has raised $53, 503 so far. I think it has some good features - a reminder to call federal entities, a way to share requests and a feature that connects to social media - but something I doubt I would use.
FOIA.gov already does a great job of pointing you in the right direction and I fear FOIA Machine's function to alert me when I might have made a mistake would be a bad thing. Some of my best requests have involved something I unintentionally got.
Having said that, I don't actually have access to the software so I can't say it won't be useful for the public and it is run by the Center for Investigative Reporting, which has been doing some really great stuff lately.
Tomorrow I will begin digging into the treasure trove of requests. My goal with Open to the Public is to share documents I could not necessarily make into a story but may be useful to someone out there.
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