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Comment by tptacek

2 months ago

Probably not, because then you'd be asking them to go do research. You FOIA for specific documents and records.

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tptacek

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neilv  2 months ago

So you can ask for the document that is the inspection report from Mel's Diner on date 11/11/2024?

Can you ask for the database record from dispatching that inspection visit to Mel's Diner on 11/11/2024, even if you don't know the exact database column names and relations?

If you can ask for that one dispatch database record, without knowing the schema, can you ask for the database records for all inspection visits to all locations in Smallville in 2024? (Or does the complexity of that database query constitute "research"?)

  • tptacek  2 months ago

    You can ask for "the inspection report from Mel's Diner on date 11/11/2024". You can also ask for "every inspection report ever done on Mel's Diner".

    You can suggest that they retrieve the inspection report from their database. This can be useful if staff wouldn't know where to find the document you're looking for. The FOIA clerk will hand the request off to IT, and if it's sensible, they'll probably try it.

    You probably (these are all humans, so no definites) can't literally use public body staff as a proxy to a database shell; for instance, they're not going to let you do a lot of interactive stuff. You're either going to produce the data that you're looking for --- which you'll need to describe in prose --- or get nothing.

    • neilv  2 months ago

      Thanks. I might be misinterpreting, but maybe the standard for what's "research" involves not presuming that a given request can be satisfied by a database query?

      So if you ask for documents in a way that sounds more complex than "every inspection report ever done on Mel's Diner", which is something they might be able to satisfy reasonably using a paper filing system or by eyeballing rows on a screen, then the request could be denied as "research"?

      So then is what the petitioner in this case looking for was a database schema that would let them say, "respectfully, I think it's not research; I think it can be satisfied with the following exact SQL query"?

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