I have written this draft of a digital records policy for the San Francisco
Sunshine (Open Government) taskforce.  There are unique qualities of the San
Francisco Ordinance which make this more possible because there is a waiver
of Attorney Client privilege for Open Gov/Ethics matters, as well as
Deliberative Process privilege and waiver of a balancing of the Public
Interest for disclosure catch-all test and lastly the Draft exemption is not
permitted.  With all that it is extremely likely that any email sent to/from
SOTF or document created by their staff is discloseable in full immediately
– not requiring redactions.

Do any of you have suggestions?


Dear CAC SOTF

I would strongly recommend the taskforce immediately adopt a long overdue
policy of online transparency and efficiency as envisioned in 67.21-1
(online efficient access) and 67.29-2 (make as many records online as
possible).

I propose a policy similar to the Palo Alto and pending San Jose one and
which I extended in my recent cover story More sunshine -- easily and at no
cost
Technology can allow the city to take a huge step forward in public access
-- right now 3/12/08 San Francisco Bay Guardian
http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=5872

I recommend an online archive which allows contemporaneous monitoring of
SOTF Communications by subscribers and full search engine features.

A copy of any email received to the [log in to unmask]  email box should
automatically be forwarded to a free Google email group
(http://groups.google.com/) set up as an online archive of the task force
communications.  These groups are fully text searchable and can handle email
attachments.  Lotus Notes used by the city allows one to set a rule on an
email box to do this automatic forwarding – much like an Out of Office or On
Vacation message many are accustomed to seeing today.  Additionally the SOTF
Administrator should be instructed in writing to Carbon Copy any emails sent
from the [log in to unmask] email box to this same Google  group.

These groups are reliable, a well tested system used by millions today and
have no capacity limits.  Additionally, they support RSS feeds (pull model)
and email subscriptions (push model) which would allow any interested member
of the public, non profits or news media to receive an instant copy of any
new activity – or a digest mode can be set to receive activity for the day
in one email.

Lastly, there should be an encouragement on the SOTF website that all
submissions be submitted in email with born digital documents. (Word. Email,
PowerPoint etc.)  

“PDF/A-1a” is now the strong standard for long term preservation of digital
documents.  http://www.pdfa.org/doku.php?id=pdfa:en

The SOTF shall adopt a policy that all digital documents received shall be
converted to at least “PDF/A-1a” or the most recently adopted ISO standard
for such preservation.   All documents created by the SOTF shall be born
digitally and posted/emailed with their native format with metadata and
their PDF equivalent.   Scan/OCR processing for Faxes and other Paper
documents received should also result in a PDF/A-1a version with OCR text. 
In either scenario, Born digital or not, the resulting PDF with text and
born digital document with PDF shall be emailed to the Google group.

The Fax machine used by SOTF shall be one which can receive faxes digitally
rather than printing to paper – this will save a scanning step, be more
reliable, waste no toner or paper and best of all it results in a higher
quality fax and OCR conversion rate.

All documents and emails created related to SOTF by other city staff
 including legal counsel, and SOTF member discussions should
Forwarded/Carbon Copied to the above described Google Group.

It shall be the policy of SOTF that all born digital documents used for
meeting packets be assembled to preserve their utility as text searchable
ADA compliant pages with SCAN/OCR processing for other documents .  Of
course these packets will be emailed to the Google group for preservation.

The SOTF shall have a retention policy of at least 100 years for all digital
documents – likely by that time storage will be so cheap there will no
longer be any need for a retention policy.

The SOTF shall have two full printed meeting packets binders and one set of
communications received/sent since the last two full SOTF meetings at every
SOTF Committee or Full meeting. 

The SOTF shall digitally record every meeting with two different model/makes
of digital recorders and post the digital content online at the city or
other central website by 10am the following day.

The SOTF shall provide sufficient extension cords and electricity l for
observer laptops and broadband internet access (preferably Wi-Fi) at a
capacity to allow high quality video streaming at every meeting.

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