NFOIC Summit: Wisconsin FOIA roundup

State-by-state updates at the 2009 NFOIC Summit: Christa Westerberg of Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council provided a summary of her state's FOI news.

• Wisconsin has seen good legal developments because of court cases that clarifies what constitutes good notice and when quasi-government organizations are subject to open meetings and records laws.
• The state has no consistent retention policy on any records. The attorney general says agencies must have a policy, but it doesn't matter what's in it.
• Legislators are working on a shield law for reporters' notebooks and sources.
• We're trying to model Minnesota's policy for police records.
• The state could use a better fees policy. Fees are now issued at the discretion of the custodian so there's a lot of arbitrariness.
• The state legislature is allowed to hammer out the budget in some private committees. Two provisions in the proposed budget include: the expungement of certain felon records and the elimination of designating official state newspapers so that required government notices could just go online without being published in print publications.
  

NFOIC Summit: Minnesota FOIA roundup

State-by-state updates at the 2009 NFOIC Summit: Helen Burke of the Minnesota Coalition on Government Information provided a summary of her state's FOI news.

• The governor's approach toward retention of e-mails is that they be kept up to 90 days, preferably 30 days.
• Minnesota took a step in the right direction with the Transparency and Accountability Project which includes vendor reports.
• Minnesota doesn't allow cameras in the courtroom, but the Supreme Court has said there can be a commission set up to explore this issue. It's moving at a glacial pace but in a good direction.
• The Uptake streamed the hearings regarding the Franken/Coleman senatorial election.
• Public access suffered a setback when the governor signed into law a bill that defines the Department of Natural Resources database as not a public database.
  

Dallas City Hall to purge e-mails after 90 days

Dallas City Hall's new policy to retain electronic communication for only 90 days is disappointing to open-records advocates who realize that it's sometimes a year or more before an issue arises, The Dallas Morning News reported. At that point, there will be no records. City officials say the policy is to help save storage space.

Dallas City Hall soon will begin purging from its computer servers many e-mails 90 days or older - a policy city officials say will save precious storage space but one some open-government advocates fear will hamper transparency.

For years, Dallas has lacked a clear document retention policy governing electronic communications.

The new 90-day e-mail policy will also help the city methodically and responsibly cull what's become a massive amount of information stored on its central computer servers, City Secretary Deborah Watkins said.

More here.

Money for e-mail archive system dries up in Mo.

Missouri legislators cut the funding projected for an e-mail retention system, which was ordered after former Gov. Matt Blunt's e-mail controversy in 2007, the AP reported.

State lawmakers have eliminated funding for a computer system that archives e-mails sent and received by about 34,000 executive branch employees.

Gov. Matt Blunt ordered the e-mail retention system after public scrutiny in 2007 about whether his office was deleting some e-mails that should have been saved as public records.

Gov. Jay Nixon recommended $731,780 in next year's budget to continue the system and expand it to cover the Missouri State Highway Patrol and Department of Natural Resources.

More here.