JimDay.Pasa@Xerox.COM (Jim Day) (06/15/87)
I know of no city that conducts council meetings via terminal, nor do I know of one that allows public access to all of its databases. But there are cities that provide public access to information of interest to civic-minded citizens. For example, a Public Access Library System (PALS) has been installed at the Pasadena central library and each branch library. Developed jointly by EMDA Inc. and the Pasadena Public Library, this public information system comprises a network of seven PDP 11 computers with a total of 100 megabytes of disk storage. The system uses 12 dial-up communication ports and is implemented by software written in DEC BASIC. Three online databases are available on PALS at this time: Your Officials, a Calendar of Events, and the Community Organization Directory. These are updated daily to provide current information. -- Jim Day
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (06/18/87)
I got into this late, so excuse me if this is something already discussed, but you know it is common for government to have a lot of information stored that is not accessible to the general public, and rightly so. For example, individuals' tax records, certain police reports, medical records, etc., are considered confidential, and it would be a violation of someone's right to privacy to reveal them. The Freedom of Information Act and other "Sunshine" laws are designed to make much of the info government has accessible, but even here it is often the case that a person can only request information about himself or herself, not about arbitrary other people. So, not having government computer systems open to the public is not necessarily bad. - - Jim Day says: >I know of no city that conducts council meetings via terminal, Neither do I, but I read a corporate charter the other day that allows Board of Directors meetings via telephone. > ...But there are cities that provide public access to information of interest > to civic-minded citizens. For example, a Public Access Library System (PALS) > has been installed at the Pasadena central library and each branch library. Cleveland, Ohio has a similar system, called Free-Net. It runs under Unix (tm) on an AT&T 3B2/400 szystem, with about 10 dial-in lines right now. The organization that runs it is an independent not-for-profit corporation, but it has ties to Case Western Reserve University and the local governments. The software is available for a license fee of $1 per year. You can call Cleveland and try out their system, but I don't know the number. Rochester is looking into setting up such a system right now. One of the things that might be available on it would be the information gathered by another Rochester organization, National Public Data, which tries to get public information, government reports, and classics of literature into electronic form for free distribution. This is just getting started, however. Mike Ciaraldi ARPA: ciaraldi@cs.rochester.edu uucp: seismo!rochester!ciaraldi