Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Rules Committee pauses decision on providing public records in Word after debate over metadata and legal duty
Summary
The committee continued a request from the Clerk of the Board for policy direction on whether to provide records in Word or PDF after technical, legal, and public-access concerns. The Clerk warned of pending requests that may require Word-format responses if the board does not act.
The Rules Committee on Wednesday continued discussion about whether the Clerk of the Board should provide public records in their native Word/Excel formats or only as PDFs, after a lengthy exchange among the clerk, IT staff, the City Attorney’s Office, the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force and members of the public.
Gloria Young, Clerk of the Board, said the office has provided documents in PDF since 2000 and sought policy direction because “we have several requests that are pending in our office to provide members of the public with documents in Word.” She said the office had been advised by the City Attorney to provide PDFs and cited server-security and metadata concerns as reasons to limit native-file release.
Rod Laux, chief technology officer for the Department of Telecommunications and Information Services, gave a technical explanation of metadata and extended data in Office…
Already have an account? Log in
Subscribe to keep reading
Unlock the rest of this article — and every article on Citizen Portal.
- Unlimited articles
- AI-powered breakdowns of topics, speakers, decisions, and budgets
- Instant alerts when your location has a new meeting
- Follow topics and more locations
- 1,000 AI Insights / month, plus AI Chat
