The city of San Diego used to have a performance measure for its handling of public records requests.The Human Resources Department, which processes such inquiries, listed “percent of public records act requests completed within mandated timeline” as a key performance indicator in city budgets. In 2013, about 75 percent were completed in the required 10 days. The measure increased to 84 percent in 2014 and 85 percent in 2015.
The figure has not been updated more recently. Measurement of progress on this metric halted earlier this year, when the city rolled out “NextRequest,” an online portal for residents to request city government documents. The new online tool was touted as part of a transparency push.
The online records portal is powered by a San Francisco-based vendor of the same name, at a cost to the city of $22,400 per year. Continue…