http://domemagazine.com/blogs/pressbox/sd0209 Michigan People, Politics, and Policy Thu, 12 Jan 2012 01:01:05 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://domemagazine.com/blogs/pressbox/sd0209#comment-721 greg schmid Sun, 01 Feb 2009 15:32:51 +0000 http://domemagazine.com/blogs/pressbox/sd0209#comment-721 "Right to Know" needs to be part of the constitution, with no exemptions for most governors, legislators, or court records. Too often records are generated with FOIA defense in mind - a smidgen of private information here and there so that dissemination is offensive to privacy interests. Most FOIA exemptions were well intentioned but subject to abuse. Officals acting in their official capacity should be an open book. Too often the over-stated costs of copying are prohibitive, and other easy and cost free methods denied. There is no good reason that all government records cannot be generated with an attached privacy sheet, where private information (including intellectual private property) is concentrated, and then all non-private portions actually uploaded (emailed) to an indexed real-time server where they can be searched in the same manner as google. Costs too much - doesn't do enough? I don't think so. Too often we form conclusions, then try to get the data that backs those conclusions up. This in because data is so hard to come by that we feel compelled to allocate scarce resources carefully. This traps our thinking. If we really want to learn about how our government works, we need to be able to crunch all the raw data at all levels and watch the patterns that emerge before we make our conclusions. With today's computing power and inter-connectedness, this is very practical. Of course, once we secure the "right to know", we will next need to confront the "courage to look." “Right to Know” needs to be part of the constitution, with no exemptions for most governors, legislators, or court records. Too often records are generated with FOIA defense in mind – a smidgen of private information here and there so that dissemination is offensive to privacy interests. Most FOIA exemptions were well intentioned but subject to abuse. Officals acting in their official capacity should be an open book. Too often the over-stated costs of copying are prohibitive, and other easy and cost free methods denied. There is no good reason that all government records cannot be generated with an attached privacy sheet, where private information (including intellectual private property) is concentrated, and then all non-private portions actually uploaded (emailed) to an indexed real-time server where they can be searched in the same manner as google. Costs too much – doesn’t do enough? I don’t think so. Too often we form conclusions, then try to get the data that backs those conclusions up. This in because data is so hard to come by that we feel compelled to allocate scarce resources carefully. This traps our thinking. If we really want to learn about how our government works, we need to be able to crunch all the raw data at all levels and watch the patterns that emerge before we make our conclusions. With today’s computing power and inter-connectedness, this is very practical. Of course, once we secure the “right to know”, we will next need to confront the “courage to look.”

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