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electronic copies of public records



Title: electronic copies of public records

I work for the county government in Seattle, where we are currently grappling with the question of what to do when a citizen requests an electronic copy of a public record.  We need to create a policy to deal with these requests and are wondering if anyone else has thought about this.  As I see it, there are two main issues:

First, should we send citizens copies of public records via email if they request it?  The main concern we can see with this is security -- if a member of the public has an electronic copy of a document, it would be very easy for them to make changes to it, perhaps maliciously, and then claim it was an original.  We could send read-only copies, but it still wouldn't be too difficult for someone to create an edited document from it.  Of course, people can make forgeries from photocopied documents as well, but sending them electronically just makes it that much easier.  If we determine this is a significant issue, we could conceivably write the policy to state that only paper copies of documents will be given to citizens.  However, we then have to justify this to the public, and since the convenience of having something emailed to you beats coming into the office in person, people may not be too happy about it.

Second, if we do decide to go ahead and email public records, we need to decide if and how much we will charge for the service.  Our fear (perhaps unjustified) about making the service free is that we will be completely flooded with requests for public records.  By law, we are only allowed to charge a "reasonable" fee for copies, and cannot charge for labor (since the public is already paying our salaries).  We charge 15 cents per page for photocopies, but that charge is justified by use of paper and toner, wear and tear on the copier, etc.  With electronic copies, there are no materials to charge for, and it doesn't seem right to charge for depreciation of the computer since it doesn't wear out with use like a copier does.  My supervisor suggested charging for computer time, meaning that while the computer was completing the request, it wouldn't be doing other work.  If we do charge, it seems like we should do a flat per-document fee, since it's no harder to email a 100-page document than a 1-page document.  But again, if we do establish a fee, we need to be able to justify the cost.

SO -- are any other public agencies dealing with this topic?  Do you email documents?  Do you charge for the service?  Are there other issues we haven't considered?  Any thoughts (or established policies) will be greatly appreciated!  Thank you -

Julie Kerssen
King County, WA
http://www.metrokc.gov/recelec/archives/