The Freedom of Information Act is pretty simple to follow. Let people see what they have a right to see. How a jurisdiction/agency chooses to present those documents can create, rather intentional or not, a convoluted maze of information for the citizen using the internet to access information.
Last week, I was reviewing some online documents at one site (like that’s something new:). I noted a pattern that I had seen previously and had failed to mention here so that anyone else would be aware.
Just because documents are online does not mean that all documents are ‘created equal’. In this particular case, the issue I noted involved .pdf files that were all connected to a central webpage as links. All of the documents involved data concerning that same group. I would have expected that all of the documents would have been presented in the same way.
Most of the documents were done in a ‘searchable .pdf’ file that has the document in a text format that allows the user to use a search function to find specific words or phrases that are relevant to the reader instead of having to read every single page looking for the specific words. This can be particularly important when so many of these documents are 30 pages or more in length.
What I found at this particular website was that those documents that contained rather generic information were all in searchable text formats. The problem was that when I went to those documents that contained more specific information, those documents were in a graphic .pdf format. That means those particular documents were not searchable. Of course, the search feature works, it just tells you that what you are searching for does not exist. And, it doesn’t, in a text format. However, words can be on the graphic document and not be recognized as words by the search feature.
On one of these documents, my search feature told me there were no matches to my search criteria. This was a document of more than 60 pages in length, and one in which I expected to get at least 5 hits from the search. I then went through the entire document doing my own search by reading it and found 14 places where my search word was included. That was how I determined that will all of the other documents were in searchable text format, this one that had far more specific details, was in a graphic format.
This can create a real problem for people who do a search, think something doesn’t exist in the file and moves on to the next file. I did a test and printed out the graphic .pdf file, scanned it myself as a searchable text file, and saved it as searchable .pdf and found that my eyes are not as good as they use to be, there were a total of 16 search hits on a document that shortly before had reported none.
Presenting the documents online is often going beyond the letter of the FOIA law. However, doing it in a manner that is inconsistent, some are searchable and some are not, can generate confusion for citizens, and can cause misinterpretations of the information unless the citizen knows to look beyond the search feature.
If it is a situation where you have a jurisdiction/agency seeking to intentionally hide information, this is certainly a great way to accomplish this. There are a few of these on my own website myvaresources.com where I made mistakes as I first learned how to use the scanner to post documents. I am working on getting those changed as I find them. Those are in the older documents. I learn from my mistakes:) I also try to make the site as user friendly as possible.
I’ll keep working on my site, let’s see if anyone else does:)
