Right To Know Compliance

Pennsylvania's new Right To Know Law was signed by Gov. Edward G. Rendell and became effective January 1, 2009. The Right To Know Act provides for access to public information; for a designated open-records officer in each Commonwealth agency; for a procedure of appeal; for judicial review and for the Office of Open Records. The law provides a civil penalty of up to $1,500 if an agency denies access to a public record in bad faith and up to $500 per day when an agency does not promptly comply with a court order to release records under the act.

The new law is built on the presumption that most government records are open with the exception of specific 30 different areas [link to page]. The law also places the burden with the public entity for showing why a record should be withheld instead of forcing requesters to establish why it should be made public.

The law covers all state, county and local agencies including to a limited extent the legislature and state's judicial system, both of which were previously exempt. The law also includes many local agencies such as counties, boroughs, townships and school districts, which were previously not mandated to provide records to the public.

The single most critical piece of advice the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records offered to agencies impacted by the new law was to conduct a records management analysis to determine the types of records that the agency possesses. Since the Right To Know Act includes all types of records and documents, including E-mail messages, every agency must be able to quickly and efficiently respond to any RTK request and be able to determine where the records are archived.

IMR Solution for Right To Know Compliance
IMR has developed a comprehensive Right To Know Law Compliance Solution that allows public entities to comply with the law through the use of technology that can assist the organization in managing and organizing information. When a request comes in for specific information, a query can be run that will integrate with multiple diverse systems to produce a results list of all relevant documents that meet the criteria for the search. IMR works closely with each agency to customize a front end and reporting mechanism that will allow users to easily request the information, track the result and report on all requests. This solution will allow any agency to make sure that they are implementing processes that will deliver the results required to comply with the new law.