Twisted Web: Governments Botch Promise of Internet

Back in the day, the Internet was fancied as an information highway. Today, throughout New York State, citizens have been given little more than a path.

A new study by the Empire Center for Public Policy has documented how badly local governments have botched the opportunities presented by the Internet to inform citizens and taxpayers.

The Center graded the website of 500 counties, cities, towns, villages and school districts. No fewer than 427 earned an F.

Thirty-six others received a D. Not one earned an A.

Pathetic.

You can attribute some of the problem to the resistance to innovation and change that is found in government from top to bottom. I mean, the words best practice and government usually aren’t found in the same sentence, especially here in New York State. But the problem runs deeper. Governments at all levels, from Washington to village town halls, have become increasingly hostile toward the notion of the public’s right to know. This plays out in all sorts of ways.

If you’re a reporter, or a taxpaying citizen, seeking a public document often involves a bureaucrat demanding you file a request under the Freedom of Information Law. You’re then likely to wait an inordinate amount of time to receive said document. Likewise, if you want to talk to an elected official or government employee, there is a good chance you will be directed to a flack who, more often than not, will thwart any effort to talk to someone who can actually answer questions truthfully.

Government, you see, has become a game of spin, in which reporters and citizens are treated as folks to inform on a “need to know” basis only.

So it is with government websites across the state.

“Most websites are missing a lot of information that we would consider critical to the taxpayer’s right to know,” Tim Hoefer, the report’s author and executive director of the Empire Center, told my colleague Charlotte Keith. “I often make the analogy between a taxpayer and local government and a stockholder in a company: You wouldn’t deny a stockholder the ability to come and look through the books, nor should you a taxpayer.”

The report considered the websites of all the state’s 62 cities, the 57 counties outside of New York City, and the most populated towns, villages and school districts. The center graded websites in 10 categories for the availability of basic information and the ease of navigation. “We’re talking about things like budgets, spending information, contact information [and] public meeting notices,” Hoefer said.

Governments across the board were graded especially poorly for their failure to post contracts online, be they labor or business agreements. Only 1 percent of websites posted such information. Even easy-to-post data, such as contact information for officials and departments, was missing from 65 percent of websites.

Counties scored slightly better than other units of government but still had a failure rate of 72 percent. School districts scored the worst, with 92 percent earning an F grade.

The state’s largest population centers fared poorly, aside from New York City, which earned a B. The City of Albany and its school district both received F grades. Ditto for Binghamton. The cities of Buffalo and Syracuse received F grades for their municipal websites and a D for their schools. The City of Rochester’s website was graded a D, while its school district received an F.

The poor grades ought to shame local governments and school districts into action, but I doubt they will. The Empire Center hopes to issue another report card next year, and perhaps that will spur some to act. Personally, I’d like to see the Empire Center evaluate state departments and authorities, which I suspect would make local governments look almost good by comparison.

Jim Heaney is the founder, editor and executive editor of Investigative Post.