Most
Americans can easily find videos of water skiing squirrels on the
Internet but they’ll have less luck finding out whether their
children's school buses and classrooms are safe, or if neighborhood gas
stations are overcharging.
The Sunshine Week 2009 Survey of State Government Information online found that while more and more government records are being posted online, some of the most important information is being left offline. And in some cases governments are charging taxpayers to access records that they already paid for, such as death certificates.
Teams of surveyors scanned government Web sites in every U.S. state to look for 20 different kinds of public records. The results were released today at the start of Sunshine Week 2009, which runs March 15-21. The study was developed by Sunshine Week, the American Society of Newspaper Editors' Freedom of Information Committee, the National Freedom of Information Coalition, and the Society of Professional Journalists' FOI Committee.
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Posted by: Elaina | March 20, 2009 at 08:23 AM
Most if not all states have privacy restrictions for vital records (i.e. death certificates) that govern access. It is a matter of law, so even if an agency was interested in posting these records online, they would not be able to unless the law was changed.
Certified copies of vital records especially are key to proof of identity, and so it requires somewhat more of a process than other more public-ready information.
An excellent analysis of this, by the way, can be found at http://indianalawblog.com/archives/2009/03/ind_law_more_on_187.html.
Posted by: Gina | March 18, 2009 at 07:41 PM