Look what you did!!!! Plus, responding to more obfuscation from the Office of the Gov.

by: Celtic Diva

Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 01:37:54 AM AKDT

First, let's gaze upon the fruits of ALL of your labor!!!!  On one hand, it made me feel REALLY good to see those numbers in writing!  I felt so proud of YOU FOLKS for doing this...it sure wasn't me!  

And I admit it, I felt a tad bit grateful to C4P and especially the Stapletongue for opening that gargantuan mouth and shortening our fundraiser probably by days!

However, all of that is replaced by the anger I feel over the games the Palin Administration plays on every level to keep their activities secret.  

Let's go back to several weeks ago, before icons and desecrations and pageant pictures in running magazines...back to trying to get over the initial shock of how much an "open and transparent Governor" actually costs a private citizen.

Let's go back to when we DARED to ask for a fee waiver and see the response!!!

UNDER $5.00??  Really???  So if Father Fiorelli at Our Lady of Perpetual Guilt made a records request of all emails dealing with charitable work, you guys would charge him if it was over $5.00???

Wow, that I'd like to see!!!!  Oh...but wait...it will cost me an arm and a leg to prove it, won't it?

Nice little racket you guys have going here!

Now comes the responses to my computer guru's questions:

Oh, yeah, that's much clearer and in layman's terms...except that it doesn't even make sense to the computer guys!

And I loved the part about "I don't have a breakdown of time for each task nor can I produce it.  We are not tracking our time to that level of detail..."

I see...so that's the story you give to the State budget people when one Department feels they are being overcharged for your services?  You are saying that you cannot provide them proof to the contrary?  Or is it that you just don't WANT to give them to us so that we cannot point out the amount of time you are charging us for overnight functions when no one is working...those labor-free calculations?  But that's covered in the next questions...

So the answer to #2 is "yes" and not-so-amazingly, so is the answer to #3!!!!!

"Reasonable processing time is chargeable..."  Realize, pretty much EVERY AGENCY does its "processing" overnight, while the IT department is at home in bed and if there is a night worker, he/she is reading a book or catching up on his/her email.  So exactly how is it "reasonable" to charge me $54.84/hr FOR UNMANNED COMPUTER CALCULATIONS??

Here's a direct response to this letter from a System Administrator at a government agency:

Getting someone's current email mailbox from the exchange email server should not be that lengthy of a task.  Even with a large mailbox, it is something that can be started and left to run.  Multiple mailboxes can be done at the same time.

Converting the e-mail to a .pst file would be part of pulling a user's email from teh exchange server.  There would be no need to convert it as a separate process.  Again, if it is going to take a while, it can be started and left alone until completed.  Multiple email accounts can be handled this way.

The SSO team uses this Paraben search tool to look for email.  It will only search "reasonable sized blocks" of data at a time.  This is really bizarre as using something like Microsoft Office Outlook will search the entire .pst at a time and you only have to start it once.  If you combined all the various .pst files into a single file, you could perform one search and be done with it.

Here are comments from a computer expert in the private sector regarding explanations given by the State's computer geniuses, Enterprise Technology Services:

They need the .PST files from Outlook for the individuals requested for that period of time, then run those files through Electronic Discovery software to put into a text searchable format. IPro EDD for example. This I know since I do it for a living every day. We do it all the time for attorneys.

Since it is unknown how many pages these collections will be, the onus is on THEM to meet the strictures of the narrowed request. That means they don't hand you a stack of 200,000 email and say "here you go", they just give you the ones responsive to the request. All the extra charges for winnowing through them should be born by the state and it's obviously outdated and ill equipped IT department. It is not your responsibility to pay for their inefficiency nor do you need an explaination of "boo-hoo our job is so hard". They're paid much better than I am and have state benefits. They should do their jobs before the F.B.I. marches in there, seizes it all and brings it to me to do their jobs for them.

Even with all the technical jargon, it's more than obvious that something stinks.

By the way, if you read this and YOU have any questions about the Office of the Governor's email and records request process, the Director of ETS (Information Technology) is:

Anand Dubey
anand.dubey@alaska.gov
(907)269-5744

Records Request--Quickie Update

by: Celtic Diva

Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 23:43:58 PM AKDT

I know you've all been waiting patiently for a number of things to happen:

--me to march down to the Governor's Office, check in hand

--your avatars to show up on your emails

--a post talking about all of the above.

However, here's the most pertinent information:

***THE MONEY IS IN THE BANK!!! It made it over from Paypal, WOOO HOOO!!!***

What I can tell you is that, after a three-week break, I'm now watching my friend's daughter again during the week.  As I don't want the kids' brains to rot while I'm constantly on the computer, I'm actually taking them places, doing things with them and working in the yard with them.

I'm also still waiting for the rest of the information to come in so I can do a complete post on all of this, including my response to their last letter and their "answers" to the computer questions.  (Still waiting for one of the "computer guys" to send me their response to ETS.)

Another thing I needed:  whose name is on the check?

I called Linda Perez yesterday then sent her an email today asking who I should make the check out to.  Here was her response this afternoon:

Hello Ms. Kellen,

I didn't receive a message yesterday, so my apology for not responding.  The check should be made payable to the State of Alaska and mailed to my attention at Office of the Governor, Division of Administrative Services, P.O. Box 110001, Juneau, AK 99811-0001.

Please call me at 465-3876 if you need any further information.

Thank you,

Linda Perez

So, they were quite clear about wanting the check sent to Juneau instead of bringing it to the Governor's Office here in Anchorage.

I talked to several people who are quite knowledgeable of records request issues.  While I was hesitant to put the check in the mail out of fear that it may be lost, they encouraged me to do that instead of taking it to the Governor's Office in Anchorage.  So, I'll be getting a cashier's check and mailing it certified, receipt requested.  That way, someone has to sign for it.

When I get the rest of the information I need (hopefully sometime late tonight) I can finish the letter I'll be sending with the check, get the check ready, take pictures of it, send it to Juneau and post all about it tomorrow!!!!

And regarding your avatars...they are coming along VERY slowly...the list is HUGE!  However, you should see some with more frequency very soon.  (Again, if you want a different one, email me with a screen name and let me know!)

 

The price tag of Palin's transparency: What that money is paying for...

by: Celtic Diva

Tue Jun 16, 2009 at 10:40:30 AM AKDT

So we know the final cost of:

-- doing a search on two names

-- in six email accounts

-- through 10 months worth of emails.

In this post, I've provided the third page that I requested from the Palin Administration--the explanation for those costs from Enterprise Technology Services (ETS).  

I know what you are thinking.  You are thinking EXACTLY the same thing I thought when first reading this page...

HUH???????

Luckily, not being a computer expert, I happen to know a number of them who could wade through this gobbildy-gook and either a) explain it or b) ask the right questions to get a better explanation.  One of them, a government System Administrator, provided questions for me to ask ETS about their processes.

From: Linda Kellen
Sent: Sunday, June 14, 2009 1:42 AM
To: 'Perez, Linda J (GOV)'
Cc: 'Nizich, Michael A (GOV)'; 'Perry, Kristina Y (GOV)'; 'Fabrello, Michelle A (GOV)'; 'Jones, David T (LAW)'; 'Leighow, Sharon W (GOV)'
Subject: RE: Records Requests

Thank you for the reply.

I gave the 3rd page of the letter to a Network Operations Manager at a federal government agency so he could explain it to me.  He had some questions:

1)  Please break down the parts of the job and the amount of time required for each part.  Please describe each step in layman's terms.

2)  At any of those steps, are you performing a batch process that requires no intervention until it's complete?  That is, is it something you start by defining parameters, and then wait until it's finished for the output?

3)  Agencies generally do their batch outputs overnight and off the clock. Are you billing the time for someone to sit and wait for that batch output?

4)  Since all email is "combined," why can you not search on multiple users/mailboxes at the same time?  Are you actually having a technician search on multiple users/mailboxes at the same time but just multiplying those same hours by the number of individual users for billing purposes?

5)  You indicated that the duration of time for which to search does not change the time required to perform the searches.  This seems to indicate that some process will automatically pull files for a set duration from the retrieval location.  Is this correct?

6)  Why do the e-mails need to be converted?  Shouldn't e-mails be in a text format already, even if it's an e-mail coded in HTML that adds tags but doesn't interfere with searching it for text?

7)  It sounds like you are doing a text-based search, meaning that you search for several text terms or phrases, correct?

8)  Why does the e-mail need to be converted twice?  From your statement before, it sounds like the e-mails have to be converted once when they are retrieved, then again when they get to the State Security Office for parsing.  Why is that?

I would like to know, what criteria do you use when you determine who gets a fee waiver and who does not?

Also, could I please have a list of the records requests you have filled in the last 6 months where fee waivers were granted?

Thank you for your help!

Linda

Though these questions are also somewhat technical in nature, one can glean from them a pattern.  In order for ETS to come up with the number of hours/charges per email account, they may be:

1)  Charging labor for services (batch output) that do not require labor (are generally overnight processes),

2)  Charging for a single search of all files, then multiplying those hours per email account to come up with the cost,

3)  Charging for processes (multiple conversions) that may be unneccessary.

So now, we eagerly await Ms. Perez's response, as well as her explanation for who is eligible for the fee waiver available for information in the "public interest" that is provided in the Alaska Statutes.

However, I'm not going to wait until then to start collecting money to pay the bill because I have a limited time frame in which to do that before they make me start the process all over again.  I've come up with an idea where you guys can truly help support this process but I'm still working out some of the details. Since I must get on the road in the next 1 1/2 hours to get back to Anchorage, I'll post more on this after the Assembly Meeting tonight.