Legislation to strengthen a provision of the state open records law requiring public entities to release data in its native format gained the endorsement of the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act task force on Friday.
The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act requires public entities to provide data in the format they have on their system, but proponents of House Bill 1758 by Rep. Les Eaves, R-Searcy, and open-records advocates say that doesn't always happen.
In presenting the bill to the task force, Eaves was joined by Steve Goode with Natural State Consulting and Strategy. Goode said he represents DataScout, a data services company that works with counties across Arkansas.
Goode said that sometimes entities such as DataScout will request data from a county that uses a third-party provider to access and supply the records, "but they change the formatting of the records from the original," making it so the data can't be sorted or used.
"We just simply want the data the way that it comes," Goode told the task force.
Sarah Moore, a co-founder of the Arkansas Justice Reform Coalition, a community group focused on ending mass incarceration at the local level, said she would like to see the open records law clarified to prevent different interpretations that hinder everyday Arkansans from effectively using public records.
"I've asked for something in Excel format or electronic format, the way FOIA is written today, and I get things back in PDF or JPEGs where I'm going to have to go back and recreate that information, so I understand the conversation that this shouldn't be happening. But I'm telling you, I'm in one of the largest counties in the state of Arkansas, and it is happening," said Moore, a Washington County resident.
The task force endorsed the bill with the caveat that Eaves amend the legislation to address language dealing with how native format is defined.
Eaves said he is working on a possible amendment to the bill that would clarify that a native format is the default file format that a computer application reads or writes, and a near-native format is a derived file format that maintains the relative metadata.
The current version of HB1758 states that a requester may ask for a copy of a public record in any medium in which the record is readily available or native format in which the record exists, or a medium to which it is readily convertible with the custodian's existing software.
In other business Friday, the task force opted not to take a position on Senate Bill 535 by Sen. Breanne Davis, R-Russellville, which would bar state agencies and officials from disclosing personal information about membership, volunteers and donors to nonprofit organizations, except as required by law.
That information is already exempted from the state open records law, task force member Jeff Hankins said.