I found Adria Harper’s discussion very interesting. Although much of the information she covered was also covered in the text, it was encouraging to see that she is well-informed about her role in Open Government. It also helped for her to put some of the sometimes awkward legalese from the book into more plain language terms.
I also was pleased by her response to my question (”Do you think the trend is going to be to put more and more information online?”), that she and the First Amendment Foundation encourage the agencies to put as much information online as possible, to allow more public accessibility, making their jobs easier and ours.
I was not encouraged by how some exemptions and fees are very vague, even to her. I am eagerly awaiting our FOIA project to put to the test some of the policies that these agencies should be practicing. I find it fascinating all the information that’s available out there. It creates a great deal of responsibility: Agencies must be well-trained in how to correctly handle requests for public records, and the viewers of the information must know how to properly interpret it, especially journalists, a group that the general public largely depends on to make sense of all the technical information found in those records. I was also not encouraged by the apparent lack of discipline or punishment for agencies who don’t comply with the sunshine laws. Although it could be argued the agencies suffer from poor training, so it will be interesting to see how these agencies perform on our project as well as future audits.
I am excited about future trips in this class, so I can learn how to delve even more deeply into the sea of information that’s out there, as well as how to interpret it.
Meet you further on up the road,
Brentin