John raised some excellent points. in reveiwing the various stories from
the Indiana FOIA investigation I noted that one public official did not
release the records requested because the report contained social security
numbers. the report was very large and it would have taken an inordinate
amount of time and effort to redact the SSNs from the report. As a result
the office would be in violation of the law which stated that the records
must be produced within 24 hours. talk about being caught between a rock
and hard place.

"do I delay producing the records to protect confidential information or do
I produce the record within the required timeframe so as to satisfy the
law?"

on the whole I am in favor of the various FOIA laws, BUT I do believe that
in many cases the press (and FOIA advocates) don't really understand how
records are created and maintained. many seem to be nothing more than
fishing expeditions with the sense of "gee look what I caught" being the
end result.

While it is well and good that the press tests the various FOIA laws are
they really and truly disinterested, unbiased investigators? Maybe the best
thing would be for each state to conduct regular FOIA audits, to be
conducted by the state agency responsible for doing audits. Internal
auditors follow a strict methodology designed to test processes. And audit
reports require a formal response from the organizations audited.

May be this is something that the archival and records management community
could work on together ie review FOIA laws and recommend areas for
improvement based upon new legislation that was passed subsequent to the
passage of the original state FOIA legislation

peterk

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