You have less access to public records during pandemic. It shouldn’t be this way

Among the many workforce lessons learned from the coronavirus pandemic, I would tag this one as most significant for the government sector: It’s no longer that you work in City Hall, it’s how you work for City Hall.

Legacy government information technology should have evolved past requiring management of on-premise systems years ago.

They didn’t. A recent article in Governing cited that prior to stay-at-home orders triggered by the pandemic, 85% of government services were conducted in person and by hand using legacy technology.

My Tacoma company, which works in government public record requests, still regularly bids on projects to replace the aging paper–based record processes with much-needed modernized digital solutions. These changes enable mobility and work productively from anywhere.

Many municipalities were caught flatfooted by this coronavirus shutdown; Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that our society is undergoing two years of digital transformation in two months.

The pandemic response requires significant adjustments to processes and has triggered well-publicized delays to Freedom of Information requests.

The results scream from news headlines about government stonewalling on public records requests and how the Freedom of Information Act in the U.S. is disintegrating under the burden of COVID-19.

Lawsuits are on the rise and government inquiries are underway.

Ingenuity, enterprise and innovation have never been more critical to a well-functioning, transparent government that serves the people. The stakes are higher than ever.

I believe the people who entered government to serve the people are well positioned to adapt, but they must move quickly. Collateral damage from failing to serve the public interest and respond to public records requests is stacking up.

One major reason for the failure (or at least hesitation) to embrace digital transformation, I believe, stems from the bygone belief that data security can only be achieved through dedicated on-premises servers and not utilizing the cloud to securely store documents.

In the years leading up to the pandemic, agencies had ample evidence that the shift to cloud services increased security, provided positive citizen feedback and decreased complexity.

Aging and siloed information systems may be at the root of why Washington Gov. Jay Inslee temporarily suspended the state Public Records Act (PRA).

Agencies no longer must provide for in-person inspection of records or submission of records requests; they also no longer must respond to records requests within five business days.

This is a major misstep. A crisis of this nature is exactly the time when we need more transparency, not less, as we ensure the government is working for the people.

The truth is, we’re all evolving to a new age of distance work. Public agencies can and must be able to continue serving the public’s needs in an effective, timely and responsive manner without anyone having to walk into a government building.

The public sector must learn the lessons quickly. The cost in delaying a digital transformation is not just limiting access to records that are public, but also eroding trust and straining critical relationships with constituents who deserve better.

The cure involves a bold process that shatters the perception the status quo is acceptable, and that a digital transformation is costly, time consuming or fraught with risk. In fact, the opposite is true.

Now is the time for transformation. Government IT departments should not just be data firefighters rebooting computers.

I believe a new generation of government IT leaders will answer the call to help drive digital transformation. We are in this together and we can’t afford not to.

Shadrach White is a longtime South Sound resident and founder and CEO of cloudPWR, a Tacoma cloud software company.