{"id":155,"date":"2006-12-11T11:58:51","date_gmt":"2006-12-11T19:58:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=155"},"modified":"2006-12-11T11:58:51","modified_gmt":"2006-12-11T19:58:51","slug":"metadata-fight-over-public-access-to-original-file-formats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/metadata-fight-over-public-access-to-original-file-formats\/","title":{"rendered":"MetaData: Fight over Public Access to Original File Formats"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interesting fight has developed<\/a> in San Francisco\u00a0over getting public access to metadata that accompanies any city documents that are released.\u00a0 The city has had a policy of releasing only PDF versions of documents, most of which were originally created in Microsoft Word.\u00a0 But by converting to PDF, any tracking or metadata contained in the original document is lost.<\/p>\n

An appeal was made under Freedom of Information to\u00a0make publicly available\u00a0the original Word file that was used to author the document, but the City Attorney’s office balked at such a request.\u00a0 Their argument is that Word documents are less secure and could be much more easily manipulated should the public web site hosting the documents be hacked.<\/p>\n

When the requests for documents accompanied by original metadata were first made, many within the city were puzzled by the request.\u00a0 The city of San Francisco has gotten an education<\/a> in the meaning of metadata.\u00a0 The discussion has also touched on software that could be used to “scrub” any documents of metadata that get released and equate the use of such software to shredding of public information.<\/p>\n

The case\u00a0may be a precident in public record law and\u00a0could push the discussion to the level of new legislation.\u00a0 It is a question about the transparency of government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

PDF and the free Adobe Reader have clear advantages over proprietary authoring tools like Word for distributing documents.\u00a0 What may likely happen is that government agencies may decide to offer both PDF and the original authored file.<\/p>\n

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An interesting fight has developed in San Francisco\u00a0over getting public access to metadata that accompanies any city documents that are released.\u00a0 The city has had a policy of releasing only PDF versions of documents, most of which were originally created…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more ›<\/a><\/div>\n

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