It seems the City’s new email access policy has just exploded in thier face. In an email to Susie Wiles, chief spokeswoman for the new policy, Marilyn Young the Metro Editor of the Times Union had this to say:
Hi Susie,
I have heard the city is changing the public access rules for the e-mails of city officials, including the mayor, his staff, JEDC, etc. A member of our staff told me that one of the reasons for the change is because bloggers had easy access to that information and often used it on their sites, which was unsettling to the administration.While the change is not a problem for us (we’re at City Hall every day), it seems an extreme measure to keep the public from easily following the administration’s decision-making.When the change is made, we will be asking that the e-mails be forwarded to us each day (which is a legal request) and we will post them on jacksonville.com for the public — including bloggers — to view.
We will set up a specific e-mail address for the city to forward the e-mails to. I’ll let you know what that address is once our tech guys have set it up. As always, thanks for your help. -Marilyn
City emails, once the domain of a select few who knew the passwords to access the online system, will now be available to anyone in the city with with the ability to access jacksonville.com.
Essentially access to these emails just went from about 50 people to about 50,000 people. We hope the city and everyone has learned a lesson from this. Information in the hands of the people is power, if you try to wrest the power from the people they will fight back.
Related:
Peyton takes e-mail off public site
Mayor’s Office wrong to lessen public access
City to restrict access to internal e-mails
Metro Jacksonville press release on e-mail access restrictions
Downtownparks letter to the Mayor
Mayor’s office ending public access to emails
tags: jacksonville, times union
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