{
  "id": "1991-may-cpu-time-part-two",
  "slug": "1991-may-cpu-time-part-two",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1991-may-cpu-time-part-two.html",
  "year": 1991,
  "month": "May",
  "monthNum": 5,
  "headline": "C.P.U. Time, Part Two",
  "kicker": "",
  "author_name": "Tom Braden",
  "author_title": "",
  "affiliation": "MICAR",
  "summary": "Government agencies are charging exorbitant fees for electronic public records, and journalists can challenge these costs by analyzing the agencies' own computer cost accounting formulas to determine if prices reflect actual expenses.",
  "keywords": [
    "records",
    "costs",
    "agencies"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Investigative Methods",
    "Government & Politics",
    "Data & Databases"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "mainframe"
  ],
  "full_text": "Last year the Dayton Daily News asked the state's Department of Motor Vehicles to provide computer tapes of drivers license records. The tapes contain about seven million records. The state agency said it would provide the tapes at a cost of $3 per record - a mere $21 million. Similarly, the Hartford Courant recently sought death certificate records from the state's Department of Health and Human Services. The agency wanted $10,000 for the records. These are just two examples of a trend that is occurring with increasing frequency throughout the nation: Government agencies, suddenly besieged by journalists seeking computer tapes, are finding ways to keep information from the public by charging absurd amounts for making electronic copies of information. This means reporters need a way to analyze costs and determine if public record custodians are gouging them with outrageous prices. Government agencies using mainframe computers generally use Central Processing Unit (CPU) time to allocate costs. A mainframe computer's CPU performs all the computer's data movement. Agencies charging CPU time do so because it allows them to perform several different jobs at once. These agencies use operating system software that have special utilities, such as accounting programs, to account for and charge different users. To recover the costs associated with operating a mainframe computer, government agencies and data centers first identify these costs, then make a volume estimate, using CPU time, on how much the mainframe is used in a year. They divide the volume estimate into the cost to come up with a rate. This process, called computer cost accounting, allows the mainframe operator to take into account all of the overhead costs, such as the cost of the mainframe itself, labor, utilities and rent, in establishing rates for users. An organization quoted a price of $600 per minute of CPU time, which actually occurred in Boston, can use the agency's own formula to determine if the rate reflects the actual cost to the agency. One would multiply $600 by the number of minutes in a year -- 525,600. Multiplying that figure by $600 gives you $315 million. The question then becomes, how does that match the agency's known operating costs? The news organization requesting computer tapes must match the agency's quoted cost figure against the amount of CPU usage in a given year just as the agency itself does in allocating costs. If the mainframe is active, say, 50 percent of the time, obviously, it does not cost the agency more than $157 million to operate its system in a given year. Journalists must not acquiesce to the outrageous fees for duplicating computer tapes. Case law involving the cost of such records remains scant. But as news organizations accelerate their pursuit of public records stored in electronic format, the number of cases going to court is sure to increase. What is desperately needed is some kind of uniformity among states as well as among different government agencies within a given state as to what electronic records should cost the public. To use computerized records as a means of increasing state revenue obviously contradicts the intent of freedom of information laws, which is to ensure the public access to government information so that it may exercise its duty of self-government.",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "pre-v2",
    "extracted_at": "",
    "verified": true
  },
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  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1991-may-cpu-time-part-two.html",
  "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1991-may-cpu-time-part-two.json"
}