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A comment on Justice department 'uses aged computer system to frustrate Foia requests'.

Re:Justice department 'uses aged computer system to frustrat... by Asparagirl on Sunday July 17, 2016 @08:15PM (#12112557)
Oh man, is this relevant to my interests. An organization I founded is currently in a state-level Freedom of Information law fight -- using the Missouri Sunshine Law -- against the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, asking for two database dumps as CSV files. The databases have millions of records covering decades of data, but only about four columns, so this should take a couple of hours to export, tops. Of course, we're willing to pay for the USB flash drive to put the files on, and cover any unusual labor costs to do the export.

The good news is that the Department has agreed that we should have the legal right to this data.

The bad news is that the Missouri Dept of Health is claiming with a straight face that they can only retrieve one day's worth of data at a time from their mainframe, and must re-run the work job for each and every subsequent day's data. They claim that it is impossible for their software to select for a date range.

And therefore, they have quoted my organization a price of about one million dollars and 2.6 years to select and deliver our data.

Shot: https://mobile.twitter.com/ReclaimTheRecs/status/74644736092...

Chaser: https://mobile.twitter.com/ReclaimTheRecs/status/75116107051...

(Don't worry, we have a good Sunshine Law lawyer and he is as outraged/amused at this bullshit as we are.)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Justice department 'uses aged computer system to frustrat... by HappyFunGuy on Sunday July 17, 2016 @08:19PM (#12112570)
Have them offline and copy the raw drive/tape to trusted 3rd party (as they must do regularly for backups anwyway) and have that 3rd party query the data. Or if the data is old enough, have them just copy the backup to the 3rd party.

This should eliminate any query expense they would have had (as it's been replaced by raw data copy expense.)

And the 3rd party is to protect the data you're not supposed to get.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Justice department 'uses aged computer system to frustrat... by shawn-butler on Sunday July 17, 2016 @08:59PM (#12112698)
I would spend the money to convince or "partner" with the paper of record in the region to run a story on how out of touch they are with technology.

Unfortunately most journalists won't do it for fear of losing their "access".

Properly embarrass the right politician near an election and you get results. Apart from changing the leadership in an actual election that's about your only hope.

[ Parent | on HN ]