Iowa governments vary greatly in online postings

By MICHAEL J. CRUMB
Associated Press Writer

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- More than a dozen of Iowa's 99 counties don't offer a Web site, and there are glaring inconsistencies in content among those counties that maintain sites.

The Associated Press conducted a one-day spot-check of county and state government Web sites in late February as part of Sunshine Week, a journalist-led effort to spotlight the importance of government openness.
The check found that some counties, such as Buena Vista and Story counties, have sites that include accident and arrest reports from the sheriff's offices along with agendas, minutes of meetings, tax information and contact information. But 14 other counties don't have Web sites and haven't made posting online information a priority.

Story County Sheriff Paul Fitzgerald said part of his job is providing information to the public.

"It's public information and as elected sheriff I'm keeper of the public trust and the open records rules say that unless it's part of an active investigation the information should be open for public review," Fitzgerald said. "My opinion is in our office we're open and information is made available to the public."

Other counties that only provide the basics scoff at the idea of putting more information, such as arrest and accident reports, online.

"Why would you?" asked Debra Stearns, office manager at the Clarke County sheriff's office in southern Iowa. "We already have it set up where the weekly paper comes by every week and picks it up, so it's available. People have access to it if they want it, there's no need to duplicate it. In smaller counties, they read the paper. I don't think many people here go online to look up that information."

Clarke County Auditor Judy Church said the county has no policy addressing what goes on its Web site.

"It's up to the individual departments and each department has a person that updates their portion of the Web site," said Church, who acknowledged she's not sure what's on her department's link because someone else in her office updates the information.

"We try to think about what questions I get calls about and try to put that kind of information on there," Church said.

Pocahontas County is among those in Iowa without a Web site.
County Auditor Margene Bunda said the county is in the process of building one and hopes to post plenty of information about the county and its cities. That likely won't include such information as accident and arrest reports, she said.

"I don't think we'd be particularly interested in that kind of information," she said. "We feel there probably is other information more pertinent to the departments, and maybe the sheriff will want something like that, but we haven't gotten that deep into it," Bunda said. "It should be fairly comprehensive, but there is a lot of gobbly-gook you can put in there and I'm not sure it's worth taking up the space."

Winnebago County also doesn't have its own Web site, and there isn't any immediate plan to build one, said Jim Oulman, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors.

"We have talked about it and hopefully we will do it. There just have been more pressing things to do," Oulman said.

Although some counties don't have Web sites, some information about those counties can be found through links on the Iowa State Association of Counties' Web site or other online services.

Fitzgerald, the sheriff in Story County, which is home to Ames and Iowa State University, acknowledged that his office is large enough to have staff that can manage the Web site.

"I think demographics is a huge issue," he said. "I'm fortunate enough that I have a person in command to update press releases and other information for our Web site, but a smaller agency, where they may only have the sheriff and a small staff, it would be hard to carry out their daily duties and do that too."

Web site content is left to each department at the state level, too, and like county Web sites, there can be wide gaps in what information is published, officials said.

Some state Web sites are more dynamic and interactive, while others may be very basic, said Robert Bailey, a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Administrative Services.

"It's really all over the place," he said.

Secretary of State Michael Mauro is a strong advocate of putting as much information online as possible.

"It's absolutely critical in this day and age," he said. "The people that use it and find it user friendly and can do business off of it without having to communicate by mail or coming into the office, they really appreciate it."

Robin Harlow, the technology project manager for the Iowa State Association of Counties, said the group is working to help counties improve their Web sites.

"We recognize there is an inconsistency in information provided by our counties," Harlow said. "We recognize that some of our rural counties don't have an IT staff. It's one thing to give them a template and another to provide assistance in developing a Web site."

Harlow said there is a five-year plan in place not only to improve the quality of county Web sites in Iowa, but also to train county officials in the importance of putting public information online.

"We're developing a curriculum over the next year so they can become better consumers of technology," Harlow said.
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On the Net:
Iowa State Association of Counties: http://www.iowacounties.org/
Iowa Secretary of State's Office: http://www.sos.state.ia.us/
Iowa Department of Administrative Services: http://das.iowa.gov/