During these last few days of FOIA coverage, I would be remiss if I didn’t take a few minutes to talk about some of the positive steps that I have found where a local government is really working to insure the FOIA is used in their jurisdiction. The City of Virginia Beach is one such jurisdiction.
The City of Virginia Beach formed a committee to assess Internet Access of Public Information. The report they generated is available online and provides a good example of how government can work with citizens and the FOIA to help keep people informed. Although the study focuses on Real Estate issues, it is certainly a format that could be applied in a multitude of areas where the FOIA is concerned.
As with any legitimate study, they looked at the pros and cons, and they looked at what other jurisdictions were doing in order to develop recommendations for their City to apply. Their recommendation include a wide range and even allows for those businesses that utilize that data to be the ones to carry the greater financial burden, rather than taxpayers. The option would provide some special features for those businesses that use the system fairly extensively, but would be a pay option.
One of the interesting things I found was the part of the report where it was noted that under the FOIA, there are more things required to be posted online when the jurisdiction has a website where they conduct routine business. Under this portion of the law, it would appear that the jurisdiction could have what is essentially an advertising website and would not be required to post public documents on the website.
It is this last that brought to my mind the rationale used by Town of Christiansburg government for having a website and the capabilities to handle bill paying online for about 10 years and never utilizing it. Of course, now, the software they purchased for handling online payments is obsolete and new software would have to be purchased in order to add the ‘bill pay online option.
So, taxpayer money was spent to buy software that was never used, that is now worthless, and more taxpayer money will need to be invested if bill paying online is ever to be available for Christiansburg residents. Not only is it the loss of taxpayer money for the purchase of the program, other tax money was essentially thrown away. What was spent in mailing costs, paper, printing, copying, envelopes , staff time, etc. was lost as there was no paperless option available for bills to be sent out automatically via email, or available to citizens through the website, and payments to have been made on the website. Now, in order to save some of that money, the Town will have to purchase new software and start over.
A friend of mine once told me nobody does something for nothing. In this case it rather looks like the Town made a ‘show’ of responding to citizens by setting up a dead website and buying software. Rather than have to post all of those documents online and have them readily accessible to citizens, they elected to let the ‘pay on line’ option and the ‘website’ all but die of neglect. Was it really worth all of that taxpayer money to keep from having to post meeting notices, agendas, minutes, and other public documents online? If so, why? Who benefited while citizens lost? Gotta wonder!
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