State revamps open-data access plans and aims to link portals with FOI guidance

Connecticut’s Office of Policy and Management on Tuesday laid out a redesigned process for agency open-data access plans and said the state will pursue training and user-facing changes to better match open-data publication with Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and public needs.

Pauline Zaldonis, Open Data Coordinator, said agencies will be asked this month to answer structured brainstorming questions and then meet with OPM staff in late summer and fall to finalize agency open-data priorities. Agencies will submit responses via Microsoft Forms and the state plans to publish a consolidated dataset showing agency priorities on the Open Connecticut portal or otherwise make it publicly accessible.

Why it matters: board members emphasized that publishing data proactively can reduce FOI workload and improve transparency, but user experience matters; requesters redirected to portals need clear agency ownership and guidance.

What the new process will do

- Strategic planning: OPM will send brainstorming questions to agency data officers this month; agencies will use June–July to develop priorities and later submit answers via Microsoft Forms. The goal is annual updates and a shift from one-off compliance to strategic publication.

- Content of the questions: agencies will be asked how open data aligns with mission, what datasets are valuable to publish, what metadata and automation would help, and what barriers exist to making data public.

- Public access: OPM plans to publish the assembled agency plans as a dataset on the Connecticut open-data portal or make them available through another public means; the final public format is still to be determined.

FOI integration and user guidance

Nick Smaro, staff attorney at the Freedom of Information Commission, urged clearer connections between the FOI process and the open-data portal. “I would just review our suggestions to make a specific FOI … disclaimer,” he said, recommending each dataset show the originating agency and a simple note explaining how requesters should follow up if they want formal records under FOI. Nick and other board members also urged agencies to provide user-facing help and tutorials so that everyday requesters are not redirected to raw data they cannot interpret.

Training and capacity building

OPM said it is partnering with Tyler Technologies to run training for agency users of Connecticut’s open-data and enterprise data platforms. The vendor-led series began in June and will continue in the month following the meeting; OPM reported attendance in the mid-teens to 30-plus for several sessions. Topics include clean and tidy data, visualizations, automating updates, SQL-like queries (SOQL), and data-management practices.

The Geographic Information Office is running a webinar series with the extension office that covers licensed and open-source GIS tools and data-processing methods. Boards discussed building a GIS cohort across agencies to share staff expertise and training opportunities.

Discussion versus direction

Board members asked OPM to: (1) consider mining FOI-request software for patterns of high-demand datasets as candidates for proactive publication, (2) include FOI-oriented language or a simple guidance note on dataset pages indicating the originating agency and how FOI requests relate to the published dataset, and (3) coordinate trainings and outreach through the Data Collaborative and other partners to reach users beyond internal agency staff.

Ending

OPM said it will pilot the brainstorming questions with agencies and return to the board with initial results and an approach for publishing agency plans on the open-data portal.