[nowarninglabel]

Hi Brooke, one thing that isn't clear from reading the links you provided, did Ancestry pay the fee requested by the state? From what I can tell, you refused to pay the fee (rightly or wrongly, I have no ability to assess the cost quoted to you). But if Ancestry paid it, would that not explain why their request was fulfilled first?

[Asparagirl]

Hi! That’s exactly what we’d like to know! Our lawsuit is asking the New York State Department of Health for copies of “all correspondence, e-mails, proposals, drafts, notes, agreements, contracts, meetings and calendar entries, phone logs, meeting minutes, budget items, receipts, vendorization forms or data, bids, evaluation materials, Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) records requests and their associated correspondence and any appeals, and any other documentation or communications between the New York State Department of Health and Ancestry.com, or such materials within the New York State Department of Health about Ancestry.com."

Basically, we’re asking NYS DOH “what happened here?”

So here’s the thing: under New York’s law, either the state can quote you the actual costs of making the copies and you then pay it (paper photocopies are capped at $0.25/page, other media must be actual costs of duplication) OR the requestor can physically make the copies themselves, onsite, during business hours. Using methods of duplication like a cellphone camera (flash turned off and battery-powered) has been held by the state Committee on Open Government (COOG) in their Advisory Opinions on the law, to be totally free.

So initially we asked the state for a cost estimate for these microfiche and they pulled one out of their ass, $152,000 for what should have been a few thousand dollars at most (see lawsuit text for the estimate calculations). OR we could just make the microfiche scans ourselves onsite, and that should have been free.

So we were willing to do option B, make the copies. But the state made us jump through all kinds of hoops to prove that the magical microfiche machine was high quality, that we would do it hand-fed instead of sheet-fed, that we work around their employees’ schedule, and so on. We said yes to all of that.

And then blammo, 800 lb gorilla company gets the records first, literally using our own words to do it.

So either Ancestry paid the fee, or Ancestry took Option B, as we were going to do, and did the work themselves. As per their PR Department in this BuzzFeed article, they did the work themselves.

But then they’re a for-profit company, acting as a de-facto vendor for the state. So shouldn’t there be a contract for the work?

[privateSFacct]

Folks - this is what makes government nervous. You have irreplacable records, and then a group comes in and considers all the rules "stupid" and "silly" and calls the microfiche machine "magical".

I don't think folks realize how risk averse government is. Literally, they probably use ONE brand of machine they KNOW works to deal with these records that go back over 100+ years. This is not some big conspiracy, this is literally how government works.

They've got an outfit come in, no budget, unwilling to pay for anything, can't be bothered to do things right. And then they get a corporation in like ancestry, probably can point to tons of experience doing exactly this, with lots of references, with deep enough pockets that if they screw up they can be persued to make it right.

Seriously, I've contracted with the goverment, the references thing alone is 100% how they operate, they want to see that you've done this same thing you will do for them 3x without problems for other agencies they can call up.

Seriously, if you did a high quality product, insured, check all the boxes, are totally 100% on all the "stupid" paperwork, the govt will fall over in love with you and you will have more work then you can handle, especially if you do it for free, and have 3 other places you've done it for who like your work.

[Asparagirl]

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that we are a company or were bidding for a government contract. We are not and were not: governments are required to provide copies of public records like these, or else required to allow us access.

We’ve sued and won settlements in Freedom of Information Lawsuits like this one three times in the past four years (and won attorneys fees twice!), and currently have five more cases pending in various jurisdictions, both state and federal. Your apparent experiences as a paid or contracted vendor are not quite analogous to this situation.

[privateSFacct]

You seem to be under the mistaken impression, that burdened under 100's (literally) of rules, the govt can do a one off special project like this for $3,000. Seriously, I've fought the goverment too, and won, on some stupid requirements that were explicitly revoked at higher levels of govt but hadn't filtered down.

That one issue (went through chain to their legal team, and back a few times) cost more than $3,000 of the governments time.

You are constantly making the claim that the government is charging 50x what it should cost. You are wrong. Period. I've paid a relative fortune to have the government run a select query on a database. And they still messed it up, I could probably have run it in 30 seconds.

If scanning records is something you do, then I would STRONGLY suggest rather than trying to get the government to figure out how to scan records, you, without calling the rules silly, develop some experience scanning the records yourself. If you offer to scan, with experience, insurance, good equipment etc and make the stuff available for free - you will be welcomed in many places.

Now you are suing because they gave you the records free that someone else either paid the govt to prepare (unlikely - that would have been a SLOW process) or prepared themselves and gave a copy to the government (which was probably not required)? I find that pathetic. NY did a good thing by having the first requestor make available a copy for others.

[matthewmacleod]

With reference to the last paragraph, the point is that nobody seems to know exactly what happened here and something seems a bit fishy. Isn’t it reasonable to follow this up and find out what happened?

[SpelingBeeChamp]

> But then they’re a for-profit company, acting as a de-facto vendor for the state. So shouldn’t there be a contract for the work?

I assume that you are familiar with the contracts NARA has entered into with its "digitization partners"?

[Asparagirl]

Oh yes. The ones where the records are supposed to become public (instead of “exclusive”) five years later, but in practice have not been made public...

[dplgk]

Does it matter? The point is that the state made the cost prohibitively high.

[MrEldritch]

It matters for "does Ancestry.com get preferential access" if they did, in fact, jump through all the same illegal hoops and just had the money to pay for them

[dogecoinbase]

In that circumstance, the state was able to grossly overcharge a private company for access to public records. I imagine that would also be worthwhile information to both that company's shareholders and voters in the state.

How on earth are there so many people on HN defending this? It's clear that _something_ untoward happened, and somehow the bad actor is not-for-profit archivists?

[privateSFacct]

"grossly overcharge"?

Seriously - these tech companies have burn rates in the millions PER MONTH. I frankly wouldn't be surprised if ancestrery is doing over $1B per year.

Please note - these are records that CAN NOT be lost by the state. Some shmucks who can't even afford $100K want to take possession of this stuff? Forget it. Seriously, the van crashed on the way to the cheap place that scans these, the van burned up on the way to our "super cheap" scanning place - is no excuse to permanently lose irreplacable records. That's how half these startups and fly by night groups work.

I've often looked at these quotes. The cost to government, with salaries, pensions, supervisors and admin to do something it doesn't normally do, make sure it is safe, get in the scanners, do the quality control etc is higher than you think.

Just to do the RFP is a HUGE PAIN in goverment. You have to write it, get it approved, publicize it, get bids, find a scoring panel, score them, check they meet all the city and goverment requirements (redwood purchasing, mcbride principles for northern ireland, health care accountability - the list goes on). Then do all the adjustments for preference groups (now mostly local and micro biz and small biz, and WME etc). Then you have to fight the appeals. Every politicans rule drives the cost UP in govt. Voted in by the people. By the time you are at contract stage, getting city attorney approval etc - you are burnt out. Trust me, if someone comes knocking and wants all this for free - forget it.

If ancestry paid, then the real issue is these schmucks got preferential treatment by not paying and free-riding off the work the company paid for. And this is considered preferential treatment for ancestry?

I'm not fan of them (and don't use them), but folks, get a grip. If one requester has to pay $150K or insure, demonstrate prior experience doing this etc etc, and another get's it free because the first paid, that is NOT preferential treatment for the first who paid. What planet are these guys on?

[dogecoinbase]

Seriously - these tech companies have burn rates in the millions PER MONTH. I frankly wouldn't be surprised if ancestrery is doing over $1B per year.

This is not about how much money "ancestrery" has to burn. I have also bid government jobs; almost none of the expenses you mention have anything to do with safely handling vital records. In fact, they are inefficiencies that the government is not legally permitted to pass along to records requestors.

I'm not sure what your dog in this fight is, but you clearly have one. I would certainly be curious to know what would make you think that records required to be legally accessible to the public should only be available to those with burn rates in the millions PER MONTH.

[oh_sigh]

Burn rates of tech companies are irrelevant. The question isn't whether or not ancestry paid the 150k but rather if it was appropriate for NY to charge 150k for preliminary access to these records.

[privateSFacct]

If they are asking NY to do the work, then yes, that price sounds fair. And this illustrates the problem here, they have no clue.

What they are asking is for NY to bid this, fight the bid appeals, contract this, manage this, supervise this, etc. Govt does not do well with new stuff, and everything goes through the big bureaucracy.

And vendor side, all the requirements (the forced source hiring so you can't use your own staff, but have to wait forever for someone to send you some folks for the "entry level" positions you are required to fill from the pool they have, plus a billion political football things that you need to jump through that have no real impact on the actual project etc) means the bids are high.

As someone who has worked both sides of this - the lack of knowledge here is shocking.

I'm not in NY, but looked up just the fringe overhead rate - 62%. That's probably double the private sector as a point of reference.

So to digitize 100 years of irreplacable records, be on-site, probably have to offer to leave the machine and equipment, work around a potentially unionized workforce (trust me - no fun). That get's costly.

If Ancestry shows up with insurance, money, references and experience doing this, they definitely would have moved to front of line.

People also don't realize that most of the gadflys involved in bothers government wear everyone out there. There are tons of overblown drama from folks with no budget who are totally convinced the state is out to get them. That makes for some very jaded govt workers.

[dplgk]

ancestry might not have gotten preferential treatment specifically but generally corporations did because charging that amount is a gate to keep out people who can't afford it

[squirrelicus]

Which, to be clear, isn't a bad thing. You can't have randos coming in and ruining your documents. There must be an element of "are you seriously sure you can treat these things with care?" and 150k isn't a lot for a serious document digitizing entity.

[Asparagirl]

The law is very clear: either the state hires an approved vendor, but only charges the actual costs of duplication plus hard drive or other media (no mark-up allowed), or the state allows the requestor to digitize the files themselves onsite for free. This is long-established law in most states, and more than forty years old in New York.

The state’s quote of $152,000 was more than fifty times the actual costs of digitization. We provided them with a breakdown of the costs, using both commercial and government sources as comparisons, even though that is supposed to be the state’s job, not the requestor’s.

The state still denied our request and our appeal.

So, no. Inflating estimates of the costs of public records by fifty times is flat-out illegal.