I missed the mayoral candidates forum on open government and technology, but sfist had a lively and fun report on it. I like David Chiu’s idea of lighting up all the city’s fiber optic cable — but why not go further, and lay cable everywhere that we’re tearing up the streets for sewer replacement? The biggest cost of laying cable is trenching and filling — and we’re already doing that. Mayor Lee wants a big street-repair bond for the fall, but a bond act to run public fiber under all the city streets would be far more valuable in the long term.
Here’s an even easier one: Make the basic city finance and property records available on a searchable database.
Our reporter Rebecca Bowe has been trying for a week to get the SFPD or the controller’s office to give her salary and overtime information for a couple of cops. Everyone’s too busy. It’s too much of a hassle. They can’t get to the records. We hear that all the time.
So why do city employees have to bother with this sort of request? Why isn’t there a public database of all the salaries of all city employees? The Chronicle did its own in 2009. How hard would it be for the city to post that data?
Same goes for Assessor’s Office records. I can pay a private company like LexisNexis a monthly fee, and get instant, searchable access to public records of property ownership and transfers, but why should I have to? Why isn’t all that data on line, too?
The Health Department has a nifty database to search for restaurant inspection records. There’s a fun GIS system that lets you look an a parcel of land and find out who owns it and track all the building permits. But there’s no place to simply type in a name and get a list of all the property that person owns, or track ownership transfers or any of that other stuff that can be done easily with a paid service.
Some sunshine advocates, including Kimo Crossman, have gone even further, suggesting that every document that a city employee creates (with the exception of certain personnel, law-enforcement and other exempt records) be automatically stored in a publicly accessible database.
There’s some expense, obviously, in setting this all up and maintaining it — but considering how overworked and harried the staff at SFPD and the Controller’s Office seem to be, the savings in the long run in worker time would be well worth it.