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In honor of Sunshine Week, a nationwide initiative celebrating the freedom of information, the Utah Headliners chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists on Monday suggested three ways Utah governments can be more transparent.
Unreasonable fees, unsearchable records and a lack of training are barriers to the public's ability to obtain government records in Utah, said Linda Petersen, the chapter's freedom of information chair.
She urged government agencies to keep their fees for record requests down and to raise public awareness about how to use the state's Government Records Access and Management Act, GRAMA, to access records.
It's important for agencies "to keep the records, not just to have them for themselves, but to have them for the public," Petersen said. SPJ would like to see Utah agencies "that are much more user-friendly and have that assumption that somebody in the public might come in and might not actually know what GRAMA stands for," she said.
She also emphasized the importance of creating standards for the electronic storage of records.
"I was part of the GRAMA task force four years ago, and they felt at that point the technology was still evolving," she said. "But definitely in the future we need to push for standards across the state so there is a consistent standard, because there really isn't anything."
Board president McKenzie Romero said while SPJ would love to see the Legislature pass state-wide standards addressing electronic storage, local governments can take the lead.
"These are points, these are practices that can be put into place right now without any kind of approval from the Legislature," she said.
Petersen applauded the 2015 Legislature's passage of SB157 from Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo. The bill allows citizens to appeal to the state records committee when an agency denies their records requests and makes consumer complaints more accessible to the public.
She said Utah overall has strong transparency laws, consistently ranking no. 10 to 12 in the nation.
"Citizens need to realize that it's much more accessible than it used to be," she said. "So many records are now available online that they can go online from the comfort of their own homes and find out what is going on in their government. And then to pursue it, in many cases, [it] isn't that difficult to swing by city hall, fill out a request and get access to the information."