Legislator Looking To Force Government Agencies To Release FOIAed Documents In Their Original...

Legislator Looking To Force Government Agencies To Release FOIAed Documents In Their Original...
The process is the punishment. "Government agencies shouldn't be format shifting responsive documents. Sure, some of this can be chalked up to ignorance. But a lot more can be chalked up to deliberate efforts to make responsive documents as useless as possible for requesters. Watchdog requested staff salaries and contract info from the city of Denver and got printouts of the spreadsheets in PDF form. Sure, it got the data it wanted, but with none of the usefulness of the original document in its original format. Unbelievably, government agencies that have refused to provide databases, spreadsheets, etc. to FOIA requesters claim these actions are taken to "maintain the integrity of the data." Really? Are they sending requesters the only copy of the data? Are they somehow convinced the release of a database or spreadsheet would corrupt the data stored on their local drives? This excuse makes no sense. "