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Utah has opened a central online location for people to submit open-records requests to state agencies.

The open-records portal at http://openrecords.utah.gov is an attempt to cut through some of the bureaucratic difficulties in locating who at a particular state agency would field the request and how to contact them.

"The portal is a central point for requesting access to records from state executive agencies," according to a Department of Administrative Services news release. "The portal will be expanded over the next two years to include local governments as well."

Impetus for creating the portal came from the Utah Transparency Advisory Board. Sen. Deidre Henderson, R-Spanish Fork, is the chairwoman of that panel and sponsored the authorizing legislation (SB70) last year.

"My goal in coming up with the idea for the GRAMA (Government Records Access and Management Act) portal was, how can we make searching for government data accessible for people who aren't in the know, regular people who don't know which department to look under, which division of which department to look under," Henderson said in an interview Tuesday.

"We still have some tweaking to do but certainly it's nice to have a portal where someone can go and put in their GRAMA request and they don't have to be an expert on the inner workings of government to be able to have access to the information that's rightfully theirs."

In addition to being a clearinghouse for records requests, Henderson sees the website as a warehouse for public information. It allows filtering and embedding of data and easy generation of graphs. Beyond the data already available on the site, collected from a variety of agencies, information released as a result of GRAMA requests submitted through the portal will then be placed on the openrecords.utah website.

SB70, which passed the Legislature without a dissenting vote and was signed by Gov. Gary Herbert, carried a $615,000 price tag. It is designed ultimately to cover all government agencies subject to GRAMA.

All state executive-branch agencies are now included in the portal, with school districts, counties, cities and the Utah Transit Authority scheduled to be added by Jan. 1, 2016. Special service districts will be onboard by Jan. 1, 2017.

State archivist Patricia Smith-Mansfield told legislators these deadlines were realistic because the state already certifies all agency GRAMA officers and has their contact information.

Administrative Services says the new open-records portal is aimed at promoting government transparency and accountability. Users are invited to provide feedback by emailing openrecordsadmin@utah.gov.

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