Massachusetts

GIS
Profit-making
Online
Software
Resources

Reporters in Massachusetts say that general access to electronic record is pretty good. Some journalists say they have been charged what seem to be "unreasonably" high fees. For a January 2003 story about traffic stops, Boston Globe correspondent Bill Dedman said he had to do a lot of negotiating to get the data he needed for the story. At one point, the state denied some of the information under the state’s Driver’s Privacy Protection Act. The newspaper analyzed more than 750,000 tickets, from every police department in the state, and found a wide racial disparity in traffic tickets and vehicle searches. In addition, Massachusetts allows agencies to restrict the use of mapping data and some agencies may charge a special fee for access to the information.

The law. The Public Records Law defines a public record to include "recorded tapes, financial statements, statistical tabulations or other documentary materials or data, regardless of physical form or characteristics." Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 4, § 7, cl. 26; Mass. Admin. Code tit. 950, § 32.03. State administrative regulations encompass computer records by providing fees for access to them (see below). Statutes limit access to computer files of some state offices.

State tax information is exempt from the public records law and only the commissioner of revenue may authorize "public access to terminals or other data processing equipment for the purpose of copying, reading, collecting, printing, analyzing or manipulating any data or other information . . . or to authorize the release of the original or copies of tapes, cards, disc files or other methods of electronic storage." Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 59, § 52C. A statute limits access to computer terminals of the registrar of motor vehicles to government employees, law enforcement agencies, "insurance companies and their authorized agents and service carriers, . . . and the trial courts or computer manufacturers or data processing consultants under contract with the commonwealth." Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 90, § 30A.

Cases & opinions. Prior to passage of the Public Records Law, the attorney general concluded that the registrar’s computer files of drivers license suspensions and revocations were public records. The registrar of motor vehicles could make a computer terminal available to the insurance industry to obtain access to the records. Mass. Op. Att’y Gen. 7, 1971 Report, p. 43 (Aug. 28, 1970). The supervisor of public records ruled that the Department of Industrial Accidents must create a program to segregate non-exempt information from its database for release to a requester. The requester offered to pay for the programming, estimated at $5,000. The estimated cost of paper copies was $521,063. S.P.R. 90/205 (1990).
Central Voter Registry, a computer database created and maintained by the Office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth, is available to the public. The database includes the names, addresses, and effective dates of registration of all registered voters in the commonwealth. Mass. Op Att’y Gen. 01/02-1 (Oct. 11, 2001).

Fees. Except where statutes mandate specific charges, a records custodian may demand "a reasonable fee" for a copy of a record and may also charge the "actual expense" for a search for records. Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 66, § 10(a). State regulations set the maximum fee for a computer printout at 50 cents per page. A custodian may charge "the actual cost incurred from the use of the computer time" for a search of electronic records, and "the actual cost incurred" for providing "copies of public records not susceptible to ordinary means of evaluation." The custodian is "encouraged to waive fees where disclosure would benefit the public interest." When a person requests street census computer tapes and mailing labels, voter registrars may not charge more than one cent per name, provided that a minimum fee of no more than $90 may be assessed. Fees for these materials may not exceed $750. Mass. Admin. Code tit. 950, § 32.06 (July 1993).

There may be delays and increased expense if the information has to be reduced to producible form. In addition, an electronic database may contain both public and nonpublic information. See Doe v. Registrar of Motor Vehicles, 26 Mass. App. Ct. 415, 528 N.E. 2d 880, (1988); 27 Mass. App. Ct. 1192, 543 N.E.2d 432 (1989). While there are no known court decisions on the relative availability of electronically and paper stored data, the Massachusetts Appeals Court has expressed reservations about the fact that modem data processing technology allows "the aggregation of pieces of personal information to large central data banks" and stated that "there is a negative public interest in placing the private affairs of so many individuals in computer banks available for public scrutiny." See Doe v. Registrar of Motor Vehicles, 26 Mass. App. Ct. 415, 528 N.E.2d 880, 886 (1988).

Software. Proprietary issues surrounding software availability do not appear to be have been addressed in the statutes or case law, although it may be noted that personnel data is clearly confidential and should not be distributed in either software or hard copy form. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 30, §63; ch. 66A, §2; Mass. Regs. Code tit. 501, § 3.05; Mass. Regs. Code tit. 701, § 3.04. See also general exceptions to Public Records Law. Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 4, §7, cl. 26 (a)-(m).

It also is a crime to obtain or attempt to obtain "any commercial computer service by false representation, false statement, unauthorized charging the account of another, by installing or tampering with any facilities or equipment or by any other means." Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 266, §33A. The statutory definition of "commercial computer service" appears to be broad enough to include government computer programs that are available only for a fee although there is no case law on the subject.

Profit making. Lists of motor vehicle registrations have been sold by the Registry of Motor Vehicles to commercial concerns since the time of the Ford Model A. See Direct-Mail Service, Inc. v. Comm’r of Public Works, 295 Mass. 9 (1936).

Many municipal assessors sell lists of properties, addresses, owners and assessed valuations. These also are available from commercial sources.

GIS. Where available, reuse may be restricted. For example, the terms and conditions for the use of digital data provided by MassGIS include the following: "Data provided under this Agreement are intended for the use of the receiving agency, organization or individual. They are not intended to be redistributed or resold to other agencies, organizations or individuals. . . . All maps or other documents produced using data or data products supplied through this agreement should contain a data source credit, prominently displayed, such as ‘source data supplied by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, MassGIS.'"

The main source for GIS information in Massachusetts is MassGIS at the executive office of environmental affairs ("EOEA"). This office offers three types of service to outside agencies and members of the public: distribution of digital GIS data from the EOEA database; map production and printing; and coordination and assistance with GIS development, including data development.

Digital GIS data is distributed in sets covering the entire state or as custom orders for one or more geographic "tiles" or "coverage’s." The standard format for digital data distributed by this office is ARC/Info Export (.EOO) with data in the Massachusetts State Plane coordinate system.

Fees are authorized by Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 653, §138 and for digital cardiographic data files range from $50-$150 depending on the category of information sought.

For a so-called Category A map, which includes MassGIS theme maps of towns, quadrangles or other standard units or copies of other standard maps, the fee is $50 for the first sheet and $15 for additional copies of the same map. For Category B, which includes MassGIS theme maps of client-specified study areas and minor modifications of existing maps, the fee is $100 for the first sheet and $15 for additional copies.

GIS Information, which may not be as complete as that at the central MassGIS, is often available from other state agencies including the Department of Environmental Management, the Department of Environmental Protection, the Water Resources Authority and the Metropolitan District Commission as well as some of Massachusetts’ 13 regional planning authorities. The form in which it is available at these sources varies from computer disk to hard copy.

Online. A list of what is currently available from state government may be obtained from MagNet’s Massachusetts Access to Government Information Server.

On the other hand, access to information at what might generally be described as the county level is clearly spotty. Likewise, the state of automation in the county registries of deeds varies. In some, registry index information identifying buyers and sellers and dates of sale is available online. In others, it is not. There is no capability to image copies of deeds or other real estate instruments without special software.

Resources. Massachusetts Secretary of State Public Records Division