[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...