In order to streamline the process of providing crash reports, the city of Santa Fe's Office of Records Custodians has begun publishing them online in weekly installments. That means people are no longer required to file individual public records requests to receive them.
City officials said the change is intended to increase public access to the reports and cut down on redundant work.
"Since we're doing it on a weekly basis, they don't have to wait that 15-day time period that IPRA allows; they can just automatically find their report online," said Inspection of Public Records Act Manager Katherine Garcia-Gallegos.
Garcia-Gallegos said crash reports are one of the city's most requested items, making up nearly 80% of this year's volume of records requests, which has exceeded more than 10,000 records to date.
While they are easy to produce — each takes about five minutes on average — she said the same record is often requested by a number of parties, meaning records custodians have to produce the same report multiple times.
"So one crash report could generate a request for the same report from each driver, their insurance companies and each attorney that's representing them," she said. "So that's at least four to five requests for the same report."
Publishing the reports online will cut down on duplicate work and make the reports available more quickly to anyone who wants to see them, Garcia-Gallegos said.
City Attorney Erin McSherry, who oversees the Office of Records Custodians, said the idea has been in the works for a little while but didn't happen earlier in part because of concerns about redacting sensitive information such as people's birth dates and driver's license numbers.
She said the state agencies involved in producing these reports, including the Department of Transportation and Department of Public Safety, recently began automatically redacting that information in crash reports, which made it easier for the city to publish them. City records staff still inspect each report before publication to ensure personal information is not listed in another part of the report.
The city currently has the reports listed by date and driver name, but McSherry said her office is talking to the city's Internet technology department about how to make the data more easily searchable and interactive, including potentially creating a city map with reports linked to crash locations.
"That would require some additional coding our IT department is looking at, but it's a multiagency coordination," she said.
Long wait times for records requests has been an ongoing source of frustration for some residents; the city is currently facing several lawsuits from people alleging the city violated state open records law by not fulfilling their requests in a timely manner.
City officials said they have been taking steps to improve the city's processing of records requests, including by hiring and training additional staff. The publication of the crash reports is part of an ongoing effort to make sure more information is available directly on the city's website, Garcia-Gallegos said, work that also includes making city contracts and previously approved ordinances and resolutions easily accessible online.
"We are looking to put more and more just directly online," McSherry said.
The crash reports currently date back to Nov. 24 and will be uploaded on a weekly basis going forward, Garcia-Gallegos said. The reports landing page is linked to the city's IPRA web page and the police department's records request landing page, and is also noted on the city's Next Request portal where records requests are submitted.
The current landing site is a beta form of what city officials hope to be a longstanding initiative if it proves useful to residents.
"We're hopeful that it's helpful," McSherry said.
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