Civil Beat disclosed the salaries of more than 14,000 state employees this week, generating some debate over the propriety of disclosure and questions about their decision to put most of the data behind their pay wall.
In response to a public record request made several months ago, Civil Beat obtained a 334-page list of salaries in pdf format. The list includes the employees name, department, and job title. Salary ranges are provided for employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement, while exact salaries are reported for exempt employees. The two forms of disclosure are required by Hawaii’s Uniform Information Practices Act (Chapter 92F HRS).
It’s the first time that data like these have been publicly reported in Hawaii, although similar reports have become much more common on the mainland.
While some state employees may find the public disclosure of their salaries uncomfortable, I’m all for this kind of transparency. It provides more than just theoretical accountability. This is the only way that salary inequities can be identified, potential favoritism highlighted, or errors flagged. Overall, such disclosure yields a tangible public benefit.
On Wednesday, Civil Beat explained:
Now on our site, in addition to a PDF of the document the state provided, you’ll find a searchable database (available to full members) where you can find how much the state pays by position and, in many cases, by individual.
Ah, there’s the rub.
Civil Beat does not allow viewers to download the pdf file, and somewhat cripples it by making it available for viewing only via a web service called Slideshare.
Blogger Ryan Ozawa points out that the decision not to simply make the original public record directly available to the public may seem to be a reasonable business decision, but it directly conflicts with Civil Beat’s own self-definition as a journalistic enterprise aiming for openness and transparency.
In a blog post yesterday, Ozawa wrote:
In short, I don’t like that Civil Beat acquired the data under the auspices of “public data,” but is then turning around and selling access back to that same public.
Yes, I know that many businesses depend on this very model (including my employer). Like Civil Beat, it’s usually not so much the data that’s being sold, but rather its presentation and interpretation. And the response to criticism is obvious: you can always get the information yourself.
What makes Civil Beat different, in my view, is that it’s a journalistic enterprise. And not just any journalistic enterprise. They explicitly distinguish themselves from conventional media by focusing on civic affairs, aiming to create an informed public via an online “civic square.” As they said in announcing the salary information, it’s public information acquired in the name of transparency. Crippling access to the information seems to go against this vision.
I don’t have a problem with Civil Beat’s decision restrict its searchable version of the data to its own members, although I question the wisdom of that choice. As a new enterprise still seeking to public recognition, this is the kind of item that has the potential to draw significant numbers of new viewers to the site. Crippling or restricting the data undermines that effort.
And any business advantage gained by such restrictions will be temporary. Ozawa has already put in a request for the same list provided to Civil Beat, and intends to make it freely available.
Ozawa notes, correctly in my view, that the “value added” by Civil Beat to the raw public data is in its context, data analysis, and commentary. That’s what it should be selling to the public, not transforming raw public data into proprietary data, even temporarily.
I’m going to be interested to see how those other autonomous parts of the state system, like the University of Hawaii and the DOE, respond to the salary disclosure request. And, of course, to see what sort of analysis Civil Beat provides.
Interesting times ahead.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The big difference between the heretofore reports by UH on salaries is that there were no names attached.
Granted, Vice-President for External Affairs is pretty easy to figure out who that is. But this request by Civil Beat is not just in broad occupational categories like Social Worker I, II, III or IV. But it will (or does) list the position, the person’s name, and the exact salary.
Again, where is that balance? For example, what if a few thousand of us asked for detailed job descriptions for every employee in the state and city? Granted, it would be tens of thousands of pages that would need to be aggregated, retrievable and possibly selectively redacted but so what? Don’t we have the right to know exactly what people are hired to do?
@Ryan, what you’re asking is for every agency (or DAGS, I suppose for most government workers) to post a real-time salary report that would include overtime.
Doable, I suppose, but is this truly the best use of government employees’ time?
Again, I don’t know the answer to this but I don’t think it’s something that takes someone an hour a week to do.
@Wailau, no doubt private, non-profit, and public employees are different. Yet, if I’m a shareholder in a company, or a dues paying member of a non-profit, or a subscriber to a periodical, I don’t have a “right” to know what people get paid?
For example, a publically traded company has the word “public” in it, no? Or is it none of our business?
I suppose for the open government types, there would be a mega-database that would list every government and military position, name, realtime salary, pension benefits, health insurance benefits, etc.
Not to mention a mega-database that has every memo, letter, document issued by any government entity along with telephone logs of numbers that were called.
Of course, all of this should be able to be downloaded in a variety of formats so that any one can parse, disaggregate, analyze and summarize to the nth degree.
For me, it ultimately comes down to what is the best policy that ensures a level of transparency and accountability and yet does not paralyze government from providing services to the public.
No, in most cases–all those involving employees covered by collective bargaining–exact salaries were not reported. Instead, salary ranges are given.
This was a victory for the public employee unions, which fought any disclosure. It was also a compromise eventually agreed to by backers of openness and accountability.
People should be aware of the Texas Tribune, which is a great model of what a non-profit online news organization is capable of.
http://www.texastribune.org
It’s truly amazing how much journalistic value there is in aggregating public information.
Civil Beat definitely should be applauded for getting this project done—it’s one we would have loved to have undertaken at Honolulu Weekly.
I’d like to echo Ragnar’s sentiments on the Texas Tribune. They have a great looking product online.
It was started only earlier this year, and that operation was recently honored at the Asian American Journalists Association national awards banquet earlier this month with the “Innovation in Watchdog Journalism” award.
Hopefully Civil Beat will go after the salaries of Mufi’s appointees (now Caldwell’s appointees) at City Hall. He increased the number of employees working directly for him and raised their salaries considerably. A 5 percent salary cut is nothing when you got raises every year.
In case anyone cares, here’s a reminder that congressional staff salaries are detailed – by name – for all members of congress at:
http://www.legistorm.com
Of interest to see what the Hawaii folks are paid in our four congressional offices.
I was also wondering why the data base was restricted to members so I asked someone at CB and was told that the PDF was what they were given by the state and CB’s staff compiled the searchable data base. I’m not sure how hard that was but it is “value added”.
Not that I’m a fan of the gated community approach CB has chosen but if they could do it, it shouldn’t be too hard to put it in a database for those with the tech skills to do so.
Also it appears that it is downloadable at the Slideshare site- at least there is a button that says “Download” (although I didn’t try it because a 300 plus page PDF would probably overwhelm my old 256 computer).
The download was disabled.
I’ve seen the list. According to CB, “It’s also important for state employees to know that they’re being paid fairly in comparison with their colleagues…” The truth is that after seeing what some of my colleagues earn, I was, well, bummed.