[Dayshine]

Actually, I can kinda see his argument.

They have this data which is not digitized. Someone requests the data in a digitized form.

So, they go down their normal process for digitizing. They have certain standards for digitizing, and it hits the minimum threshold for going to tender (Maybe $10k).

It's a government organisation so they have to create a tender which organisations would bid for, and everything has to be certified to correct standards, insured, etc.

Reclaim The Records might be able to do it cost for $3k, but it still has to go to tender, and Reclaim the Records would have to prove they can meet all the requirements and such, which would probably quickly increase the cost.

Once it goes to tender, all the costs are waaaay higher, because you have to cover the costs of bidding and such.

[danaris]

But it doesn't matter what their "normal process" for digitizing is, because there's a law that says that they have to provide the requested information and restricts the kinds of expenses they can pass on to them.

So, sure, their "normal process" would say, "If this is to get digitized, we need to make sure that it will go into our existing system of digitized records, and it has to meet these standards of quality, and it has to have three people review it to make sure the OCR got done properly" etc etc.

But that's what it would take to get it into their system. Not what it would take to provide the records to the requestor.

If the requirements of the law can be satisfied and the requestor is happy to accept a simple scan costing a few thousand, the state doesn't get to say "we'll only do it by our full six-month six-figure process."