Digital Divide

This is absurd! I would be more than happy to even include the media on my emails to my ccboe account. (Barring student, personnel, and legal information). I think they would find it's rather cumbersome and benign. As for the government charging the outrageous fee...that sounds like a lot of hogwash and someone doesn't want someone else reading their emails (which by the way or public anyway.) Possibly a private citizen could request those email (instead of a media outlet). I wonder if the fee would be the same? And if it is, I wonder if that private citizen could then argue that outrageous fee and bring charges (appeals, lawsuits) against the government for not really making the emails public. Just thinking...

Friday, July 11, 2008
By JAY FRIESS
Staff writer

Though governments’ e-mails are public records, local policies are all over the map

Those who want to know what their government has been up to lately should prepare to put up some cash.

As e-mail and the World Wide Web have become technologies fundamental to government communications and largely replaced postal and interoffice ‘‘snail mail” as the chief means of communication between Southern Maryland’s governments and their citizens, the rules on government transparency have been slow to catch up.

There is a wall growing between the increasing number of official e-mail communications and the ability of the public and the news media to monitor those communications. But government officials say that the wall needs to be higher in order to prevent them from being swamped by information requests.

Read more HERE