California attempts to move transparency along

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Would you like to see law requiring all open records information to be available in a searchable format? Kentuckians would certainly benefit from this and SunshineReview.org reports that Californians could soon be.

California is considering legislation that would require all open records data to be made available in an electronic, searchable format such as Excel amidst requests from First Amendment activists.

Why is this important? Access to information is just one aspect of transparency. The usability of the documents is also an important piece of the transparency puzzle. The Bluegrass Institute has encountered hard to use information from countless open records requests (dot matrix financial print-outs and several thousand page PDFs just to name a couple of examples.)

Kentucky's General Assembly should take note of this step forward for transparency in California. This would be a great step for Kentucky.