Editor's Note: This is the second of a two-part article offering advice to computer-assisted reporters who might cover or develop a computer beat. Part one ran in the October issue of Uplink.
In the last issue we talked about a variety of government operations that are ripe for good investigative pieces. You might also look at data coordination across departments. Frequently you will find a large government agency has numerous systems, none of which are compatible. Many times they can't even share e-mail.
Sometimes personal disputes can lead to computer problems. In Los Angeles County, for instance, the Treasurer-Tax Collector, Auditor-Controller and Assessor departments all are responsible for part of the property tax billing and collection process.
When it came time for a new property tax system, however, the three departments didn't work together. The Assessor developed one system on its own, while the other two departments separately developed a second one that was supposed to hook up with the assessor's new computers.
When a new Assessor got into a personal war with the Auditor, communications between the departments ceased. Months later, when the assessor's new computer system went on-line, it kicked out 15,000 parcels, just didn't recognize them. No one caught the problem in the Assessor's office. The department that DID catch the problem, the Auditor's office, didn't bother to tell the assessor for months, until the problem entries filled boxes and boxes.
And when the Auditor-Treasurer system started running two years later, it also didn't work well with the assessor computer, causing another 26,000 problem parcels that took years, millions of dollars and dozens of additional staff to fix.
Then there's the general problem of just getting information out of these computers. Some systems don't even allow you to get electronic versions of their records easily and inexpensively. When I sought a text-only dump of all the appointees to county boards and commissions, bureaucrats told me it would cost well over $200 for what should have been a 15-minute (or less) text dump onto a single floppy disk. The mainframe they use would require special programming to do even that basic task, they said. We passed on the opportunity, but there's no reason why it should have required anything like that kind of cost. Often, the information is in a proprietary format that can only be read by a single program, which in turn may cost thousands of dollars. How does the public get access in a reasonable way to this information? And what happens when the agency gets a new system and wants to convert the information to that program? Can it?
There are also a number of "softer" stories about computer systems that newspapers ought to run more often, spotlighting issues of public access to the information we've all paid so much for government to collect.
Many revenue-starved governments are looking at ways to make money. The possibility of selling tapes of property tax records, voter registration rolls or other information at a premium is quite tempting, but often is a violation of the spirit if not letter of open records laws.
Information, please
Sociology 101
Computers are changing the way we relate to each other, through e-mail, on-line chat services, and more. George Gilder, among others, has written interestingly about the changes being wrought.
E-mail, for instance, causes people to communicate in different ways (more candid, sometimes painfully, or rudely so) than we do in person.
It's worth investigating as we network more and more to see what it means for streamlining government and improving public access. Politicians are increasingly seeing the Internet and other online capabilities as a great way to reach out and tell their side of things. That's worth following up. There are issues of children's access to the sometimes raw discussion channels and chat lines of adults in online services and bulletin boards. There are concerns about child molesters and pornographers using the lines to recruit new victims and trade their materials with each other. There have been occasional scandals afflicting some of the national on-line services in this regard in the past three or four years.
These ideas ought to get you started and many, in fact, can either come out of or lead to computer-assisted projects. Often, you'll get leads on problem systems when you try to get copies of interesting tapes of information. Additionally, you'll make important contacts within the bureaucracy who can point you to problems while you do the kind of small-talk kibitzing that leverages these tips out. Working on computer-assisted projects also will give you the background and lingo you need to intelligently explain what's going on in what can be a difficult and challenging area for readers and bureaucrats alike. Have at it.