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Sunday, December 12, 2004

Indiana Government - Inefficient distribution of Efficiency Reports

A brief item today at the end of the Indianapolis Star's weekly Behind Closed Doors column caught my eye. It reads:

A book and its cover

A reader couldn't help but remark upon the faux-leather bound, gold-lettered report of the Indiana Government Efficiency Commission's general government subcommittee. His question: Does anyone else think that this was an incongruous method of distributing a report on cost savings?

It may be worse than that. As I wrote in this Nov. 21st ILB entry:
I've been doing my best to locate the reports. I'm told printed copies are not available to the public, although there have been televised shots of individuals with what appeared to be printed reports. The reports now may be available on CDs from the Legislative Services Agency's (LSA's) public bill room; but when I called only one CD, of what was projected to be a set of at least two, was available, at a cost of $10.00 each, plus mailing.

Later, I was told that the report would be posted online, but that "the report consisted of several different document formats that was making it slow going getting it all on the web."

This weekend various portions of the report were "made available" online. I use the phrase "made available" advisedly, because it appears that little effort was expended by the Efficiency Commission to make these documents useable, or even to identify them adequately.

There is a possibility that something more in the way of presentation is planned. But in case it is not, or to fill the gap, here is some guidance and some cautions. But first, take note that what follows does not deal with the content of the reports, but simply with access to that content. (I have examined the content of several documents in the general government area, and my initial feeling is the quality is decidedly mixed.)

The "shots on television" were of the leatherette-bound reports referred to in today's Star story. Apparently these printed copies went to members of the General Assembly. My Nov. 21st entry goes on to detail what the rest of Indiana can do to review the Efficiency Reports; not a simple proposition.

I've checked again today, over 3 weeks later, and nothing seems to have improved for the public. The reports technically-speaking are "available" online, via this entry page. But no effort was expended in making them accessible. Following the link to the Subcommittee on General Government, the reader is faced with a list of over 50 files, with no indication of what they are. Besides being unlabeled, some of these documents are enormous (and needn't have been). One, for instance, is a 1,409 page document, consuming 317 MB (bigger than many of my early hard drives). And there is no warning; click it and w-a-i-t if you don't have DSL.

Again, the second half of my Nov. 21 entry spells out for the reader what is in these files, how large they are, etc. Certainly, the Government Efficiency Commission might have presented its reports more efficiently.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 12, 2004 09:55 AM
Posted to Indiana Government