{"id":12160,"date":"2015-11-12T16:47:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-12T16:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/statescoop.scpnewsgrp.com\/states-flunk-push-for-open-data-report\/"},"modified":"2021-09-03T14:18:14","modified_gmt":"2021-09-03T18:18:14","slug":"states-flunk-push-for-open-data-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scoopmedia-develop.go-vip.net\/statescoop\/states-flunk-push-for-open-data-report\/","title":{"rendered":"States flunk push for open data \u2014 report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nearly all 50 states came up short in their efforts to open data to the public, according to a new report from a nonprofit watchdog group.<\/p>\n

In its second “State Integrity Investigation<\/a>,”\u00a0released Monday, the Center for Public Integrity found that\u00a042 states have no open data laws on the books. Two states have laws that require the government to make information available, but they don\u2019t stipulate whether\u00a0the data should\u00a0be machine readable. Meanwhile, a majority of\u00a0states did not post\u00a0the results of financial disclosure forms by legislators and lobbyists in easily usable formats.<\/p>\n

The integrity report card, the result of a yearlong investigation that\u00a0evaluated states in 13 categories related to a range of government transparency and accountability issues, gave\u00a0only three states overall grades above a D+, and 11 flunked outright.<\/p>\n

Nicholas Kusnetz, project manager for the investigation, told StateScoop that the center put a premium\u00a0on examining open data policies and found few state efforts to make their\u00a0data machine readable, meaning it can be downloaded and manipulated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey may put information online in the form of a PDF, but take lobbyist disclosures for example,\u201d Kusnetz said. \u201cThere are few states that are putting all of it online in a way that someone can download the entire dataset of what\u2019s on those reports.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the investigation found\u00a0that 41 states made lobbyist disclosure forms available \u201conline at no cost\u201d or allowed users to\u00a0obtain them “electronically within a week, or in paper for no more than the cost of photocopies,\u201d few made those results available in a machine-readable\u00a0format. The group found that, in 11 states, lobbyist \u201cinformation is not available online, or it is, but cannot be downloaded\u201d and, in 22 states, disclosure forms are available online, but only as PDFs.<\/p>\n

When it comes to information about lawmakers\u2019 assets, Kusnetz said\u00a0that \u201csome states have been really forward in terms of putting that information online.\u201d But problems persist, he added.<\/p>\n

The center determined that 32 states make the results of legislators\u2019 asset disclosure forms available online or electronically, but again, they were rarely made readily usable. The report found that 27 states failed to make the information available or downloadable, while 23 others put the forms online, but only as PDFs.<\/p>\n

States that fail to put\u00a0those records online\u00a0make it unnecessarily difficult for the public to learn more about the outside factors that could be influencing their lawmakers,\u00a0Kusnetz said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are [states] that require you to request it, you can\u2019t just go online and go to a website and look at what kind of income lawmakers have from private jobs,\u201d Kusnetz said. \u201cIn some cases, the lawmakers are even informed of those requests, which is further disincentive.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report also raises questions about how states allow the public to access electronic government records. The accessibility of emails by officials and lawmakers was an issue that came up especially frequently.<\/p>\n

In all, the center found that staffers or legislators in at least 13 states have tried, often successfully, to block records requests for their emails. Kusnetz noted that in several states \u2014 Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kansas and New Mexico \u2014 the group found that officials were able to skirt open records laws by using private email accounts to conduct government business.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis came in Kansas, for example, where the governor acknowledged that he used a private email account to communicate with staff members, and in Kansas, that appeared to make it exempt from public disclosures law, and they\u2019re now looking at that question of how they can close that loophole,\u201d Kusnetz said. \u201cThat\u2019s really getting worked out in the courts on a state-to-state basis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Considering the report\u2019s overwhelmingly negative findings overall, Kusnetz hopes that the public will view the investigation as a call to action.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur job is to highlight these issues and bring these issues into public discussion,\u201d Kusnetz said. \u201cWe very much hope that people will go the website and look through their report cards.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found that few states made significant government information available in easily usable formats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":39356,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"disable_grayscale_images":true,"grayscale_contrast":0,"sponsored_content":false,"display_author_bio":true,"story_type":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[20650,4677],"tags":[1047,4329,1173,175,174,12],"people":[],"special-report":[],"authors":[],"class_list":["post-12160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-data-analytics","category-state","tag-open-records","tag-electronic-records","tag-open-records-laws","tag-open-data","tag-open-government","tag-state-local-news"],"yoast_head":"\nStates flunk push for open data \u2014 report | StateScoop<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scoopmedia-develop.go-vip.net\/statescoop\/states-flunk-push-for-open-data-report\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"States flunk push for open data \u2014 report | StateScoop\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found that few states made significant government information available in easily usable formats.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/scoopmedia-develop.go-vip.net\/statescoop\/states-flunk-push-for-open-data-report\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"StateScoop\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" 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