 So, I came to Oregon about two and a half years ago to join the Oregonians data team and I came from Arizona where I didn't have all that much trouble getting data or getting metadata and I found a very different experience in Oregon so that's part of why I'm very interested in that in this topic and to follow on the keynote speaker I think there's an opportunity in Oregon right now and maybe also in other states to talk about public records and change public records law and I'm quite interested in that so I'm going to focus mostly on the state and local level but I think the same principles I'd like to talk about also apply at the federal level in some way and toward the end I'd like to have a discussion if you're all game about how to make sure that kind of basic information about data sets that government already keeps are made publicly available to the extent possible so that's my general interest so I wanted to start kind of from the beginning maybe even before making a public records request you have to figure out what exists and I come out of a reporting background not a data or technical background and so I sort of didn't know how to start thinking about that and I started just mostly with academic papers and then I would just kind of like spit back out the name of a data set to a to a public records custodian and sort of like see what happened but there's a lot of there's a lot of places to get ideas I really like requests for proposals I cover a lot of law enforcement issues through data sets in Oregon and I started when I started here by making a request to the Portland Police Bureau for a data inventory and kind of what record layouts they had available and it ended up with the sit down with the city attorney who read my request back to me and debated the meaning of each word and this took like 20 minutes so so that might happen to you that's the bad news so maybe you want to have these thoughts up front so so inventories of data wastes sometimes they exist something they don't exist as in the case of Portland Police Bureau but it's a good place to start a lot of state agencies in Oregon anyway have those it's more difficult at the local level agency directives all of these are links and you you're welcome to explore them later but I just kind of gave you some recent examples of places where I had found data sets and on the subject of directives I was reading through the Portland Police Bureau directives related to gang designations and it actually like tells you about the data in the directives and so I went back and asked them for it that led to an odyssey but I had a good starting point and they did eventually get some data reports and audits quite obviously again talking about the local level here in Portland there's a great auditor's office and so they'll put on an audit and then they'll make available everything underlying and you can learn tons of stuff that you may not know this otherwise performance measures at the state level they each agency does those at the bottom of each little graph it says the data source and learned about tons of tons of databases there the federal register again at the federal level is another great source and of course ask people but I just kind of wanted to zoom all the way out because I think we sometimes narrow our scope of what we're what we're really talking about I'm interested in systems I'm interested in how programs are working and agencies often have some some record of that some record of what they do and I think that's a productive way to think about it so going back to Portland Police Bureau I asked for the inventories after the record layouts and I learned that some of them are protected by trade secrets however in another case this case was more optimistic I asked for the record layouts and I got this beautiful spreadsheet which told me what all the fields were what the data types were how many characters were available in each field and this is really useful in Oregon as you're negotiating because quite often there's a very high price tag at the beginning of cost estimates of a million dollars cost estimates of in this case I think twenty seven thousand dollars and part of the reasoning when when we got down to it was they said well you could put a social security number anywhere and so we have to have an attorney review every single field so one of the arguments that we made was you know you can't even have enough characters in this field to contain the social security number it seems kind of kind of obvious or maybe a little bit idiotic but you really do end up having a lot of those conversations so I think it makes a lot of sense to start with what metadata you can get in order to be in a good negotiating position when you get a cost estimate so highly recommend that so writing a data request I think in whatever state you want to reference the law maybe maybe specifically use the language of the law in your kind of introduction I'm asking for the following records use the name of the data set that you found in your beautiful audit or report or that you've gotten from an academic because the more specific you are the more authoritative you sound and the more seriously they take you when I don't know what fields exist because the I haven't gotten access to that metadata I will quite often like kind of make a wish list of fields and sometimes that's productive in that you'll find well that isn't in this database but that's in this other database that we can link to and so feel like just really lay it out lay out what you want and sort of see what happens as part of a conversation I think you should treat it like an sort of opening statement sometimes I also mentioned fields that I'm not interested in I know there's a credit card number or a social security number even though they're not supposed to keep those I'll say don't give me that knit sort of I think I think they also appreciate that you're cognizant there may be things that you're going to be negotiating over of course I think probably everybody here wants a CSV file so ask for it specifically one or more and I also sometimes specify like I don't want a PDF and I don't consider that to be like a satisfying answer to this request so don't give me that and I'll put them the request letter if I haven't gotten the documentation I will still ask for it in the formal request for the data sometimes this happened to a colleague of mine recently she was negotiating with a state agency she asked for the record layout she asked for data dictionaries they went through a variety of terms she got a variety of denials and then in some conversation somebody mentioned the extensible properties and lo and behold there was a beautiful data dictionary that was exactly what she needed for this very complex data set that they had said it'll be totally obvious like what's in the data from the headers like there's no way you won't know and of course she gets the data and it makes no sense but the extensible properties were there so sometimes I'll just like lay out all those terms and then also have a sentence of descriptor like I want to know what tables exist what fields exist I I take that approach because I think you want to use technical language to show that you have technical knowledge but you also want to make sure that the person who reads your request who might not have that technical knowledge like understands the extent possible what you're going for and you can sort of avoid these conversations that make no sense or they don't give you something because they don't understand it and then I kind of also put a lot of emphasis on like please don't hesitate to contact me like did you get my request did you understand my request like who's gonna be handling my request I think that's especially important for data as opposed to other kinds of records oftentimes especially at look at the local level there's only really one person who handles the data and they don't always have a tremendously high level of expertise and it's not the only thing they're doing so buffering that person and always be extremely polite I think it really matters so then you get this variety of denials I've kind of already previewed them but one thing here very often is I'm not obligated to create a record for you they say you know we we just provide records that exist and this is especially problematic in data when you have an agency that doesn't have very much expertise we were talking earlier one one strategy that I've used in the past is you know I I think I could I could just write the sequel query for you and that'll save you some time and I haven't actually gotten the opportunity to do that although I've gotten close but it does it does kind of crack the net open sometimes so try it I don't know they they realize that you can do it and that is quite embarrassing if they can't I kind of references earlier with social security numbers if there is if there is information that is personally identifiable and that you serve like agree to negotiate away that earns you a lot of good faith in part of the negotiation so I will quite often like start there if you have somebody who's just denied you denied you denied you but if you start to talk about what you might give up things can open up so I think kind of try that early at least to open up the conversation and not not necessarily negotiate anything away of indicator you are willing to do that and you want to see the full array of information that's included so you understand that what you get will not cause you to make an inaccurate conclusion in the end like these are my research questions I not everybody has this approach but I I do try to be pretty transparent about what I think are important questions that are in the public interest and I'll bring that into the conversation too much work again I'll help you like I'll sit by your computer all like I'll write your queries then back to the trade secret copyright we'll talk about that more later because we have a potential solution that we proposed and most important I think of all is like don't let it go at no a lot of these conversations go in many many circles is kind of like cascade of circles and you'll hear no and it doesn't mean no so don't let it mean no appeal in Oregon there is a an appeal process that doesn't require the courts at least in the first round if you're getting getting data from a say the city of Portland then your venue for appealing is the DA's office if you're asking for data from a state agency then your appeal venue is the Attorney General's office and it's really worth checking that out and you make an argument quite often related to the public interest and and they consider it I've had a lot of success that way so you'll hear no in various forms and some of them especially a first will be informal but you want to make sure that they cite the law specifically in their denial you want it in writing and you want to know which statute it is that they're referencing if they're talking about what they can and can't do and what the regulations are remind them that's not how the law works I mean those aren't appropriate citations there really need to be a statutory reference that they provide I for example with the police bureau I think you know go to their boss there's a political system over over the top people don't like to hear that you can't get what you want especially if it does relate to a question the public interest try it doesn't always work but I think it's worth it so I guess I have already mostly covered this so I really tried to fill this presentation with a lot of resources you could go back to you later this book up top I found tremendously helpful and one thing especially for the newer requesters out there it has a lot of example letters and a lot of negotiating tactics I think the letters especially are helpful you can see how different people do it so check that out here in Oregon there's also a state public records and public meetings manual I think there's something similar a lot of places enormous amount of resources there and the appeal decisions that have been made in many jurisdictions are quite often online or you can request those as well and that's give you guidance lastly I wanted to especially highlight the reporters committee for freedom of the press and they have state-by-state guides so not all of you are from Oregon and don't want to hear about the city of Portland endlessly but but they do have state-by-state guides and it's sort of a in an outlying format that is the same from state to state and part of the the breakouts is electronic records and how you know what the case law or statutory law is related to that it can be quite different from state to state so on the subject of change I had asked for these record layouts that I didn't get and they were cited as trade secrets I appealed all the way up to the CEO of the company which was based in Canada which one of the lines from Portland police is well we we chose a Canadian company because they take privacy more seriously and so we can't actually join these tables through a unique identifier and that was by design you can't join these tables so I thought that was I thought that was kind of funny and I didn't think that the CEO would tell me the same thing but he did so the Society of Professional Journalists the Oregon chapter put together a language for a bill that that has is now being considered in the House Rules Committee and the idea is that it would require when any agency in the future goes out to contract for database software the software would have to export in an open format and that the record layouts or related documentation would be public record without trade secrets or other exemptions it was going pretty well until this week when when there was a hearing and what we heard was the local governments thought it would massively increase the cost of contracts and there is a particular software vendor a big software vendor that wouldn't like to see this going forward and they propose a lot of language so part of what I'd like to open to the room is you know what is the right way to frame that if my intention maybe our shared intention is to make information about what data government collects available so that requesters can seek that information if they have a question that they'd like to answer with it how do we best make that available I mean this is one idea there's there others moving forward but I'd really I think it's a conversation we all ought to be having is at least to know what exists that really ought to be something that's more widely available so I'd love to hear from you that's all I would got