Access to the Government in the Computer Age

The Book entitled "Access to the Government in the Computer Age" is now available through the ABA.

According to the ABA's ad for the book, experienced lawyers from a variety of practice areas explore the impact of technology on access to public records laws, including:

• The application of public records laws to electronic data
  
• Implications of electronic documents within the context of discovery
  
• The interplay between access to public records and litigants' right of discovery
  
• The delicate balance between right of public access to electronic records and the right to
  personal privacy
  
• E-mail and the determination of when this form of communication becomes a public
  record and the extent to which it is subject to public disclosure
  
• Public records issues and the pitfalls that confront private entities doing business with
  state and local agencies
  
• The relationship between traditional attorney work, client communication privileges, and public records laws

The book is supplemented by a CD-ROM that contains links to the principal public records statute for each of the fifty states and the District of Columbia and a variety of other materials relating to state public records laws, such as government-published guides, specific state public records laws, reports by state governments on public records and technology, and links to websites relating to state open government laws.

If anyone has read it or uses it, please feel free to comment about it here.

Comments

[Benjamin Wright]

A principle of the Information Age: Government is wise to organize itself and its records so it can swiftly and efficiently respond to freedom-of-information-act requests. Resistance to such requests is wasteful and makes government look out-of-touch. --Ben http://legal-beagle.typepad.com/wrights_legal_beagle/2008/08/local-government-e-mail-and-the-freedom-of-information-act.html