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Public Notices Going Online, Not In Newspapers
An anonymous reader tips a story up on Bnet.com about the growing trend for governments and others to eschew newspapers and post notices of public record on their own Web sites. It's under discussion at local, state, and national government levels, including in the SEC and the states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, so far. "If classified ads were a backbone of the newspaper business, then the very center of the spine was the public notice. Mandated by laws and courts, these often long recitations of detail were to give official notification, to any who were interested, of the legal intents and actions of both government entities and companies that found themselves under some appropriate regulation. But a growing number of state and local governments want to move public notices online to their own sites as a cost-cutting measure. Beyond newspaper economics, critics are concerned that the shift would allow government officials to effectively hide their activities from scrutiny."
Beyond newspaper economics, critics are concerned that the shift would allow government officials to effectively hide their activities from scrutiny.
Well lets be honest there was no better place to hide news than in local newspapers, they were intended to wrap up chips (US: fries) not for reading . . .
I think if the local paper was/is widely distributed this old method might be read more widely (people without internet access, or not visiting city/state web sites often). These can be stored in libraries and seen casually around town. But our local paper of record just closed its doors, not sure where these notices will be printed now.
If you are looking for something specific (say you want to bid on a contract which might be announced using these methods) probably an internet site where you can search is best. But for the function of a watchdog or check on govt. both can hide information, with the paper printing less likely (it has to hid in plain site in small print).
by posting to their own govt websites than by hiding them by not posting a classified at all?
Dear god. If you're gunna troll, at least get the URL right: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ
How we know is more important than what we know.
Sounds like a remarkably ineffective way to hide anything. Google "public notice"+site:.gov . Should be rather simple to set up publicnotices.org (or .com) if you are worried that such notice will be "hidden".
Publishing in the Pierce County Herald, on the other hand...
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Firefox has an extension called Scrapbook that allows you to save to your cache entire copies of a webpage without saving screenshots to your hard drive. Your browser automatically downloads all pages from a website within a link depth that you set, and you can direct the process to be restricted to one domain.
I spidered www.whitehouse.gov on January 20 and January 21, 2009 to a link depth of 3. I wish I remembered to do the same thing with Blagojevich's webpages before they were changed.
The concern here seems reasonable. Local government websites are some of the most poorly designed and hardest to navigate. I could easily see this resulting in problems not out out of malice but out of simple incompetence. Presumably regulations and guidelines should be drafted for how governments should do this. The most obvious thing is that there must be actual incoming links not hidden by either nofollow tags or anything in the robots.txt file to prevent search engine indexing. Also, there needs to be guaranteed backups and permanent searchable archives (which will in some ways make this more transparent than tiny, non-searchable notices in local newspapers). There are probably other simple rules that would be needed but those are the ones that come to mind most immediately.
Today when you register a corporation you are required to post this fact in one or more newspapers or other similar publications. Often these notices are rather expensive to post as they are not simply standard classified ads.
Similarly, there are requirements for stock offerings and such. As well as government contract opportunities.
Sure, nobody reads newspapers anymore but at least they are saved in the public library for just about all time. You want to find something? There is a place to look. And, for the most part, this historical record is a trustworthy one.
Who, exactly, is archiving government web site content like this? Nobody, that's who. We are hell-bent on destroying any possibility of records for the future, and I have no idea why we are so firmly set on this as a goal. Easier? Sure it is. More relevent? Maybe. But there is no way that most of the digital information today is being archived in a meaningful manner, and what there is that is being archived has a very, very low signal to noise ratio, or perhaps more accurately for the Internet, a rather high noise to signal ratio.
Certainly the US is so firmly focused on entertainment today that newspapers and meaningful news doesn't stand a chance. It isn't entertaining and attempts to make news entertaining are usually grotesque paradies of reality.
I think this is just part of the general shift towards everyday interaction over the web. For example, a number of companies that I buy services from will only send physical bills to me if I make a special request.
In general I think this is a good thing, as it highlights the growing importance of net neutrality and universal access. As more necessities of life move online, the more people will concern themselves with these issues.
Would the notices be "published" in some archivable form? Or would they be subject to continual revision and modification?
I mean how would you like it if you were caught in a situation where you didn't have access to public information? ;-)
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
"Sure, nobody reads newspapers anymore but at least they are saved in the public library for just about all time. "
Only a geek would say that. A lot of people still read the newspaper, either their own or the libraries copy. If anything's to be hidden it's from those who don't have internet access.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Just watch, before long they'll be posting public notices by leaving them in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
For example, how the Vogons managed to get away with hiding that demolition notice in some planning department out in Bum Fuck, Alpha Centauri.
Rob
Who reads newspapers?
Old People
What group is most likely to bother to read some long boring public notice and have enough free time and spare outrage to make any noise about it?
Old People
Where do you put things you don't want Old People to find?
The Internet
This shouldn't be allowed. Public notices in newspapers serve two purposes. The first is the one mentioned, publishing the notice where interested parties can see it. The second isn't mentioned, though, and that's to create a record of the notice outside the control of the party required to post it. The notice can't be changed later, can't be quietly made to never have happened. We've already seen entities change stories posted on their Web sites when what was in those stories became inconvenient later. Yes, it's going to cost a little extra to maintain that independent record of the notices. When we make a big payment or an important one where not making it has big consequences, it definitely costs for them to give us a receipt that we can use later to prove we did pay and what we paid for. We don't accept the cost savings as a valid reason for not being given a receipt, we don't accept "Trust us, we've got a record of your payment.".
I could see a central County website/repository for public notices... but individual websites? That defeats the whole purpose of a "public" notice!
Local government websites are some of the most poorly designed and hardest to navigate.
I second you on that!
Take for instance the home page for Tuttle, Oklahoma: http://mirror.centos.org/mirrorscripts/noindex_new.html
That single page is so bloody cluttered and difficult to navigate that the Oklahoma City Manager (who is an very important pesron!) had difficulty with it. See http://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=127
When the broadband internet is treated like a utility and everyone, including deep rural dwellers has relatively easy access to it then government can take post their 'public' notices online.
As it stands right now a good percentage of the population still do not have reasonable access to the internet or are not tech savvy enough to own a computer (i.e. many of the elderly). They should not be punished for their lack of internet access by removing public government notices from newspapers which are still easily accessible by anyone.
Web hosting that doesn't suck!Dreamhost
If you are going to criticize the troll at least try to get the name right, Linus Torvalds created the Linux kernel.
First off, notice in printed media will probably never disappear completely. Online notices over time will simply be added to the required list of places to post. Along with the additional requirement, state-based legislation will likely address issues such as data retention and external review.
Vogon ships have been sited heading towards Earth.
Why doesn't the government set up a specific website, such as publicnotice.gov, and require the use of that?
Governments all over are already using internet web services such as BidSync to post their bids in lieu of other methods for public notice.
I'd much rather have a single website to review than classified ads which may never make it online.
Maybe there's a more elegant solution to my 5-second thought above, but we can't keep using local newspapers. It's practically a monopoly-type service for newspapers (public notices run about $200 or more in a small city because there is no competition), and one that will soon fall apart when these organizations die.
-David
This is a good thing, but it has to be done right. Like the SEC's EDGAR system.
EDGAR now has a user-friendly interface and a search engine, but underneath is a huge collection of raw SGML files accessible via FTP. These files stay up forever and their names and contents do not change. Many big services (Bloomberg, EDGAR Online, Google, etc.) grind through that data every day. One of my systems, Downside, does it too. There's no charge for access, bulk downloads are supported, and the raw filings are accessible. That's the way it should work.
What you don't want is something you can only access through a search engine, with some of the information on a pay site. A bad example is Delaware's corporate record system.
So the minimum standards for a public records system that replaces publication should be comparable to those maintained by EDGAR.
One thing that would be a big negative about this is the public notices of bankruptcy and foreclosure sales that are currently published. Usually those go by unnoticed and are never seen again. Generally there is not a way now, unless you can pull a credit report for a valid reason, to find out if someone (employee, friend, tenant) has had those. If they went online, they would instantly become permanently public and searchable (regardless of robots.txt, etc, some website will scrape it if there is $$$ demand).
I'm not bringing that up because I think people should be able to hide a bankruptcy or foreclosure. They are on your credit report for 7-10 years, but after that they are dropped and it's as if you have never had bankruptcy. In the meantime, landlords and employers can pull your credit report. If the notices are online, the landlords and employers can search that and see if you had something bad happen 15, 20 years later and illegally use that in their consideration. (Right now they're required to tell you why they take adverse action from a credit report, but public notices fall outside of those laws.)
Bankruptcy and foreclosure are design to help someone who would otherwise be destitute for life get back on their feet for the public good. Permanent, public, searchable records of those would only hurt that.
Thanks for reminding us of this amusing debacle. I fould it even more amusing (since this is the second time around for me) that the write-up of this historic event is about 25% of all of the content of Tuttle's article in Wikipedia.
> eschew newspapers and post notices of public record on their own Web sites.
This will be great for the Aussie Government. Public servants are supposed to advertise externally so all appointments are competitive, but they typically pick a buddy or relative for the job. The external advertising is a real pain because it gets applicants who might get the job.
No problem! They convene an "Interview Panel" populated by the buddy's friend and three other disinterested public servant chair-warmers who have no interest in the outcome. They advertise for some poor saps to go through the interview process without realising they're wasting their time. The guy makes sure the panel chooses his mate as planned, but the interview is still a waste of every ones time: the saps and the chair-warmers. Advertising will avoid this charade. Yay for Government efficiency.
Summed up here: "Government and councils only advertise a role because they are legally compelled to. They usually have an incumbent in the position, an acting who is taking up the role or someone already lined up. Unless you exceed each part of the person spec by a country mile, you're only wasting your time." http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/1059770.html
In some cities, there are still too many people who rely on public notices in print format.
Also, there should be an "official write once" record of all such notices deposited somewhere. This doesn't have to be print, microfilm, CD, or whatever.
If the "official write once" version is not made at the time of the online version, then a signed hash of the online version should be published in write-once format at the time the online version is made, so there's no chance it could be silently edited.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Newspapers lost their credibility along with the rest of the media "watchdogs" in the run up to the Iraq debacle. The only ones that made any attempt at keeping anyone honest were the bloggers who were derided as losers living in their folks basement eating cheetos (as opposed to writing in a cubicle eating cheetos).
I have the unique position of being formally employed by a newspaper business, and now do contracting work for the government (which is why I logged in as "AC"). Public notices are ONLY about the money that they bring in, and the expense is not small for the various entities that are forced to comply. The agency I work for (which is not large), spends OVER $250,000 a year complying with these requirements. This is money that ultimately comes out of our pockets, and into the albeit swindling coffers of the newspaper industry.
I bet Craigslist would be thrilled to offer free "legals", and they can be physically posted at the city halls, libraries etc., and added to the .gov websites, and indexed by the Google.
Its all about the money. Shut the lights out will you... its over.
Working journalist here...
Public notices are a Good ThingTM, but there is no real journalistic scrutiny as a result of them appearing in a newspaper; or anywhere else for that matter.
Most of the stuff that's required to print as public notice out here is liquor license applications, articles of incorporation, DUI checkpoint locations and open meeting schedules (not even the minutes).
If I did my job based only on what public notices and press releases I received from the government, I'd never get anywhere at all.
As a journalist, you learn pretty early on that the story usually isn't what the government IS telling you, it's what it ISN'T telling you.
That being said, the government should be required to make public notices available somewhere accessible (general rule of thumb is available at the library and beyond) because people might want to know about a new liquor license being issued or the city council meeting schedule.
But that's not really where the stories come from. It's one of the few remaining "easy money" opportunities for the newspapers.
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Why not do like everyone else and move these classifieds to Craigslist? It's public, divided by region, etc.
Here's the biggest problem with doing it online though: archiving. You're local library doesn't have a complete history of your city council's Web site or local Craigslist.
Here in Johannesburg South Africa municipality tried the same thing. When half a dozen subirbs started complaining about a water outage, they were told that it was advertised on the municipal web-page. I for one certainly will not be spending a day a week looking for notices from each and every new governmental / municipal / departmental website. There could easily be a designated central point into which notices could be posted, as a poster above hinted at. But for now, I'm more than likely going to assume the position of "Just because you can see it on your intranet, doesn't mean that it is publicised."
RTFM is not a radio station.
Not only do we not get the local paper, but many here have given up on it. I would not be surprised if it goes belly up soon. I talked with a fellow who was getting it for FREE and he canceled it! I think that publishing thing in the local paper and NOT on the city web site is a way that the city hides what it wants to do. We had a red light camera ordinance that was tabled and everyone thought it was dead brought to life quickly without additional public notice even in the paper. Most of the local officials in the city are about to be voted out this year in elections because of this and a new ordinance is about to be put before voters to make it mandatory that any violations that the red light camera detect be given to the offender by a policeman on the scene. So it makes it necessary for a policeman to be present, making the use of the red light cameras inconvenient and impractical. But not that many residents even knew anything was going on with these cameras in the first place because the first notice was posted in the local paper that few even read. I'd like to see it made mandatory that governments publish news, laws, etc. that affect the average person on official web sites. Maybe also in local papers, but definitely on the web. Maybe even provide it in an optional RSS feed.
I worked at the State level of government as a senior web services programmer and was tasked with improving upon the paper-based process for posting public meeting notices. Statute required (and still does) that all notices be posted for display in the Capitol building lobby at least 24 hours before the meeting was to take place. Meeting organizers would fax the notices to our main agency fax line and whoever was currently working the front desk was responsible for collecting and posting the notices. Unfortunately, the building hosting the fax machine and the capitol lobby were located almost a mile apart. This meant that the front desk staff would have to walk the notices over to the other building several times a day to avoid missing any 24 hour notice requirements. An ADA accessible touch screen/voice kiosk was setup in the Capitol lobby to display notices and was integrated with the existing intranet CMS system. An electronic form was provided at the kiosk and on our public site for people to request meetings and all submissions and staff approvals in the CMS system were tracked for auditing purposes. System was backed up everyday, and previous requests were archived in an online repository also accessible from the kiosk. Making sure that government services are available to everyone is a huge consideration when implementing tech based solutions in government. There is the real possibility of a citizen suing state agencies for discrimination due to federal disability discrimination mandates/. For this project it meant that we had to continue to offer the fax and phone submissions regardless of the additional functionality and efficiency the kiosk/cms solution provided. Desk staff had to key the form data received via fax and phone into the CMS by hand. This was almost 10 years ago and the system is still in operation. Process has been re-evaluated several times since then to fine tune different aspects of accessing the notices and to address system failure points as they were discovered. An extremely uninteresting project overall, but a great insight into government work-flow in general.