Great news from “Around the O”!
This promises a drastic improvement in public records response time, and big reductions in the delays and fees the university uses to discourage the public from getting information. While Public Records Director Lisa Thornton can be extremely efficient when it’s helpful to Johnson Hall, e.g. taking only hours to produce the documents on Provost Jim Bean’s sabbatical plans, which killed his chances of becoming interim UO president, at other times her office has trouble with the simplest tasks, generally when the requests involve information UO wants to hide.
For example, on Nov 12 I made a request to Director Thornton for “BANNER statements showing payments from the following ACCT codes from 1/1/2013 to the present: 24502, 24504, 24507, 24520, 24545, 24599, 24612, 24998.”
These are simple reports which any office manager or accounting person can whip out in about 5 minutes, total. Here’s one of them:
If you don’t believe me, go ask your office manager how long it would take them.
But Ms Thorton’s office was buffaloed by this simple process. It was a full three weeks before I got the records. So it’s good to hear that UO’s new technology will allow her office to fill public records requests in minutes, not weeks. You can check it out here.
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