The random political thoughts thread (Part Deux)

[Alex]

I think we've gone overboard on the work product we expect government to retain and maintain.

I think the official decisioning documents need to be available but not everything that goes into that decision.

For example, here in San Francisco some group successfully sued to get the original Word document rather than the distributed PDF version so that they could see the entire change history for the document. So not only do we have the right to the final document but the very first draft, every typo, every reconsideration of phrasing. To me this is stupid.

This overload prodcues so much detail that, in my opinion, the context gets lost.

To require that every electronic utterance be retained is, in my opinion, stupid. We might as well also require every government worker to wear personal tape recorders while on the job so that we can also listen in on every conversation. And stupid rules lead to stupid violations, whether intentional or not. And stupid violations lead to criminalization of the process (everybody eventually breaks a law).

If they were intentionally circumventing the law, no matter how stupid, they should be punished for it. But that doesn't make the underlying law any less stupid.