Note: This is one a series of articles in the SPJ Colorado Pro Chapter 2015 Sunshine Week project. Sunshine Week is March 15-21.

By Tom Johnson

Confused? Unsettled? Inundated and floundering in a tsumani of digital data, tools, processes and unprecedented expectations driven by concepts like site dwell-time, click-throughs and 24-hour-a-day deadlines?

I doubt this dynamic and demanding environment is going to disappear in our lifetimes. And for those of us believing in the historic Freedom of Information perspectives and process, the pressures are just going to ratchet up. Here’s why.

Tom Johnson

First, the terminology “Freedom of INFORMATION” needs to be recast.

“Information,” by definition, is that which helps us make a decision and often to take action. A better understanding comes with seeing the process of journalism as Data In > Analysis > Information Out. Therefore, what we really want from government agencies is the data, which, with analysis, we can use to generate “information.” We include that analysis-driven information in our stories, information which readers, listeners and viewers can use to make their own decisions or plans for action.

That data-to-information process drives decision-making in democracy. What all citizens in a democracy need, then, is the freedom to retrieve and analyze that data for themselves, hence, Freedom of DATA.

Today, essentially all data – text, audio, maps, images, even a reporter’s notes – exists as or is easily transmogrified into 1s and 0s. That’s why most statutes related to data requests include electronic or digital formats. If we can get that data into a digital form, the ability to analyze it becomes infinitely easier, faster and, we hope, more accurate.

But democracies are faced with two growing, parallel – but conflicting – trends.

Yes, the data is becoming easy to retrieve and analyze. At the same time, politicians, bureaucrats, institutions and individuals are increasingly fearful of what they perceive as threats to their privacy, no matter how vaguely defined that might be. Consequently, there will be growing pressure to limit citizen access to data at all levels of government. To wit:

• The presidents of all the state universities in New Mexico have stated that they, those public employees, are going to lobby the legislature to limit access to data about university job applicants and campus law enforcement.
• Author Amy Gajda describes how “A federal judge a few years ago… allowed a claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress to go forward because, to the judge’s mind, journalists had violated the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics by covering the arrest of a prosecutor on child sex solicitation charges in a sensational way.”
• Or this: “Paper files public records request—and city’s response is a lawsuit ”

These are but quick and current examples of threats to the idea of Freedom of Data which, I believe, threaten democracy itself. More arise daily.

What to do? Journalists and journalism institutions should begin enlisting the support of citizen groups across the political spectrum to expand the responsibilities of government to include making easily available our data collected with taxpayer’s money. Doing so will reduce the burdensome costs of replying to a growing number of public records requests while expanding the information-producing power for education, health care, urban infrastructure and economic growth.

“It’s The People’s Data!” Let’s help SPJ work to make our data available to The People and even journalists.

Tom Johnson, managing director of the Institute for Analytic Journalism in Santa Fe, NM, is the Society of Professional Journalists Region 9 director.