Friday April 11th, 2008 - 7:19PM

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Precedent-breaking web-databasing takes official Sunshine Law emails to never before achieved openness for public inspection

Summary: When Friends of the Community Maritime Park earned approval from the non-profit Community Maritime Park Associates (CMPA) to provide the CMP's Board of Trustees with free email service using database programming from Pensacola's Webfoot Enterprises, it was more than just another email system in a crowded field of email providers; it was the beginning of providing all elected and appointed officials with searchable databases logging every incoming and outgoing email involving the official so their public records are permanently saved for complete, near instantaneous,disclosure when fulfilling the public's request for the records.

Friends of the Community Maritime Park is providing this information to acquaint the public with this cutting-edge technology.

Story: "Trust between the public and elected or appointed officials is built upon access to public records covered by the Sunshine Law," explained Glenn C. Obert, owner of Webfoot Enterprises, the firm that developed this new technique for storing, and accessing, emails. "With this programming, public record look-ups by a range of keywords or dates takes only a second or two, compared to the old way of rummaging through email sending and receiving mailboxes.

"And even then, multiple flaws in current email systems mean even the most through search for public records will be incomplete because the official deleted emails because their mailbox space was all used up, or the official replied to an email through their personal or business computer."

Currently, official emails are handled either by the official or by a designated representative. This manner of handling emails results in a number of legal, financial, and ethics, problems for the officials themselves, for anyone designated as the Custodian of the records, and for the public at-large exercising their statutory access to all public records.

Specific examples of these problems, and Mr. Obert's answers to them, are:

* Problem: Officials who use their personal or business email address for official correspondence are creating a legal nightmare for themselves because they are now charged with being the legal custodian of the records. It creates a nightmare for the public as well because the public can't go to a centralized source for placing public record requests. It is possible that a dispute between the official and a records requestor could lead to jail time for the official.

Mr. Obert's Webfoot Solution:
"The lesson of Vanette Webb's conviction, she was an Escambia County school board member who spent 2 weeks in jail following her conviction for failing to comply with a public records request, later overturned on appeal, is that the official is placing him- or her- self into legal jeopardy for jail time, and tens of thousands of dollars in legal defense fees, if prosecutors decide the official didn't comply adequately with the records request.

"Why would any official want to be the custodian? In addition to the legal penalties, there is the issue of getting harassing public records requests, and harassing ethics complaints filed about the records, for no other reason than to humiliate the official.

"There are even more problems for the public: How do you reach the official? How do you get a request documented? How do you know that what the official turns over is actually the complete record?

"Then there is the issue of an official leaving office - how does the public get to those emails? Finally, what if the official is incapacitated, or dies - who knows where the records are archived, and what is the password to get to them?

"Webfoot's program sets up total access for whoever is designated to retrieve records on behalf of the official. All email resides on a system with quadruple redundancy using local and out-of-state servers. No matter what happens locally, the records are safe from destruction.

"And that safety goes beyond the obvious; no matter what happens to a public official, the records are archived permanently. No other programming that we are aware of protects the public's records in this manner."

* Problem: Current systems may have limited capacity mailboxes, so officials, seeking to stay within those limits, routinely delete emails thinking someone else is backing them for permanent storage.

Mr. Obert's Webfoot Solution:
"This is the most common reason for incomplete email records: Officials delete emails from their sent folder and their received folder because the number of emails becomes impossible to manage, or because the megabytes allowed for the official is used up and the official deletes emails to get back into the limits.

"Webfoot's programming doesn't care what an official does; the programming permanently saves all sent and received emails. The public's records will always be available for public inspection."

* Problem: Downloading emails into Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, or any other email program takes them off the server, and places them onto the officials' computer. Compounding the problem, if the official hits the reply key, and answers a downloaded email, the reply is never archived by the central email server.

Mr. Obert's Webfoot Solution:
"Nearly every email server is set up to take the email off the server when it is downloaded to another computer. Not only is the public
record lost there, but also responding to an email downloaded from the server from the other computer means the email never hits the email server, and therefore, that public record is on only the official's computer.

"The damage gets worse; if the official continues a back and forth email conversation after replying from his or her private or business
computer, all those emails are never archived, and neither are all future emails as well, and they are not available as required by law.
That reality speaks for itself concerning possible criminal charges against the official.

"Webfoot's programming sends all email, received, or sent, through the databasing servers. No public records are ever lost; they are available in their totality permanently."

* Problem: The cost of retrieving public records

Mr. Obert's Webfoot Solution:
"The current method, when emails are kept on a central governmental server, is to have a government employee go through records by hand,
pulling them to make hard copies, and then correlating them into some kind of understandable package that meets the records request's criteria.

"That method is extremely expensive. You disrupt the employee's workflow. You tie the employee up for an unanticipated segment of time.
If the employee's tasks are critical, you up the cost by having to reassign the employee's tasks to others until the employee finishes the search and gets the documents into a deliverable package. And even then, there may be something else that the employee missed, so now it is back to running up even more costs researching the new data. The expense to do it this way is insane."

"Webfoot's program makes the records available to the designated Custodian in less than 2 seconds. The total time investment is much less than even 1 percent of doing it the other way."

* Problem: Officials need to access their mails out of the office, or on trips, 24/7 every day

Mr. Obert's Webfoot Solution: "The Webfoot program is web browser based, so anytime the official can get on the internet, that official
can access their emails," Obert added. "Current systems limit access to computers physically on the government's network, or connected via some out-of-office networking scheme.

"Webfoot uses the standard web browser to access, and to send, emails. No matter where you are, your emails are there with you."

Webfoot will use the CMPA setup as a proof-of-concept system. It will be used to show other elected and appointed officials, as well as
private enterprises who want a 24/7 searchable database email system, how it works, and how it can be applied to their specific needs.

For further information, contact:
Glenn C. Obert of Webfoot Enterprises / 850.479.0777
glenn@webfootenterprises.com / www.WebfootEnterprises.com