FOIL-AO-15377

July 14, 2005

The staff of the Committee on Open Government is authorized to issue advisory opinions. The ensuing staff advisory opinion is based solely upon the information presented in your correspondence.

Dear

I have received your letter in which you asked how you could obtain crime statistics concerning NYS Penal Law, §220.39 from 1995 through 2004.

In this regard, I offer the following comments.

First, a request should be directed to the "records access officer" at the agency that you believe maintains the records. The records access officer has the duty of coordinating an agency’s response to requests.

Second, the Freedom of Information Law pertains to existing records. Section 89(3) of that statute provides in part that an agency is not required to create a record in response to a request. I point out, however, that §86(4) of the Freedom of Information Law defines the term "record" expansively to include:

"any information kept, held, filed, produced, reproduced by, with or for an agency or the state legislature, in any physical form whatsoever including, but not limited to, reports, statements, examinations, memoranda, opinions, folders, files, books, manuals, pamphlets, forms, papers, designs, drawings, maps, photos, letters, microfilms, computer tapes or discs, rules, regulations or codes."

Based upon the language quoted above, if information is maintained in some physical form, it would in my opinion constitute a "record" subject to rights of access conferred by the Law. Further, the definition of "record" includes specific reference to computer tapes and discs, and it was held some fifteen years ago that "[i]nformation is increasingly being stored in computers and access to such data should not be restricted merely because it is not in printed form" [Babigian v. Evans, 427 NYS 2d 688, 691 (1980); aff'd 97 AD 2d 992 (1983); see also, Szikszay v. Buelow, 436 NYS 2d 558 (1981)].

When information is maintained electronically, it has been advised that if the information sought is available under the Freedom of Information Law and may be retrieved by means of existing computer programs, an agency is required to disclose the information. In that kind of situation, the agency in my view would merely be retrieving data that it has the capacity to retrieve. Disclosure may be accomplished either by printing out the data on paper or perhaps by duplicating the data on another storage mechanism, such as a computer tape or disk. On the other hand, if information sought can be retrieved from a computer or other storage medium only by means of new programming or the alteration of existing programs, those steps would, in my opinion, be the equivalent of creating a new record. As stated earlier, since §89(3) does not require an agency to create a record, I do not believe that an agency would be required to reprogram or develop new programs to retrieve information that would otherwise be available [see Guerrier v. Hernandez-Cuebas, 165 AD 2d 218 (1991)].

If the information that you seek does not now exist or cannot be retrieved or extracted without significant reprogramming, an agency would not, in my opinion, be obliged to develop new programs or modify its existing programs in an effort to generate the data of your interest.

Assuming that the statistics that you seek do exist or can be generated, I believe that they would be available, for §87(2)(g)(i) of the Freedom of Information Law requires that "intra-agency materials" consisting of "statistical or factual tabulations or data" must be disclosed.

I hope that I have been of assistance.

Sincerely,

ROBERT J. FREEMAN
Executive Director

 

BY: Janet M. Mercer
Administrative Professional

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