Illinois Behind in Information Online

Kurt Erickson of the Pantagraph has reported that Illinois is behind the times in making information available online, according to the Sunshine Week 2009 Survey of State Government Information.

"Illinois’ ranking of 31st out of 50 comes as Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn has called on state agencies to boost the amount of information they are putting online."

More needs to be done than simply calling upon state agencies to voluntarily do this. Agencies should be required to post certain additional information online. There is no excuse for governments, at a minimum, not to have their address and contact information, listing of elected and appointed officials, public notices, ordinances, rules, agendas, and minutes online.

"Quinn’s initiative is aimed at making more information about state government available to residents."

The initiative should include local units of government. In my experience, these are often the worst offenders. Quinn could do Illinois citizens a service by proposing a new centralized online state database into which units of local government are required to submit the types of information listed above.

"In Illinois, residents can click on a number of reports and databases that show how their tax dollars are being spent and how politicians are spending their money. But, it’s not always clear how to find some of the material. Business records, such as corporate filings, are at the Illinois Secretary of State’s office Web site. Contracts are located at the Illinois Comptroller’s office website. Audit reports, which show potentially wasteful spending, are at the Auditor General’s website."

Not all corporate filings are available online from the Secretary of State. While Secretary White does offer the ability to search a Corporate/LLC database, many important business records, such as Articles of Incorporation or Organization and Annual Reports, do not appear to be available online. Also, while information about contracts is indeed available at the Comptroller's website, Comptroller Hynes does not appear to offer the the contracts themselves online. In addition, the search and browse features often make it difficult to find the information that one might be seeking (For example, it does not seem possible to search by agency awarding the contract.)

A good start would be requiring the posting of an exhaustive official list of all public bodies. Many of these entities, such as Local Records Commissions or the Local Government Consolidation Commission, don't even have websites, let alone online availability of reports that they will, or have, issued; but the public can't address these issues if they don't know that these and what other entities actually exist. The Illinois State Library already maintains an excellent list of state Boards and Commissions, as all state agencies are required by Section 21 of the State Library Act (15 ILCS 320/21) to provide the library with copies of all publications they produce. (Too bad many of them fail to do this or refuse to do it in electronic form so that the library can make these available online.)

I might also suggest that the state should make all primary legal materials, including court decisions, freely available online. The state codes, consisting of statutes and administrative rules, are already so available; but despite the fact that court decisions have the ability to set precedent and are themselves a type of law--case law--only the most recent cases are available online, unless one is able to pay the outrageous fees of a proprietary commercial vendor. It would be easy enough to require the Supreme Court Reporter of Decisions (another public body without its own website) to post the decisions online. The Reporter already receives all of the decisions and pays a third party to publish them.

If ignorance of the law is no excuse, does not due process demand that the public have reasonable access to everything here above mentioned?