Eric Worrall writes: It looks like NOAA have found a new way to stifle FOIA inquiries from the public. According to Steve Goddard, NOAA have just demanded a $262,000 administrative fee for zipping up a few raw data files.
Steve Goddard has published a scan of the outrageous fee demand he and fellow FOIA requestor Kent Clizbe received from NOAA administrator Maria S Williams. The letter, sent on March 17th, demands $262,000 by March 24th, or further communication – otherwise Maria says they will consider the matter closed.
https://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/fee-notification-letter-2014-001602.pdf
The NOAA staff directory lists Maria Williams as the Chief of Staff Support Services Branch. https://nsd.rdc.noaa.gov/nsd/pubresult?LNAME=wil
For the full story read Steve’s post – https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/03/20/freedom-isnt-free/
As an IT expert with over 20 years of experience, my expert opinion on the claim by NOAA that it would require $262,000 to gather up a few computer files and send them to Steve is that it sounds like a complete crock. Even if some of the files are in printed form, they can just be run through a scanner – my automatic page feed scanner can process a page every few seconds, even cheap scanners can process thousands of pages per day. If the files are too big to put in an email (likely), for trivial cost NOAA could publish them on a password protected web page – it would take at most a day to set up such a web page, and add the files to it.
If NOAA’s data files really are so poorly catalogued that several man years of effort would be required to find them, this is something NOAA should be fixing on their own time. If this is the case, NOAA should not be attempting to charge FOIA petitioners outrageous fees to cover NOAA’s own incompetence.
NOAA and EPA have been using this tactic to keep their fraud out of the public eye. A similar wall was met by itssd.org last year. The home page of their site has two “portals” down along the right side. One for EPA FOIAs and one for NOAA.
Goodard doesn’t understand how to do an FOIA request.
“As an IT expert with over 20 years of experience, my expert opinion on the claim by NOAA that it would require $262,000 to gather up a few computer files and send them to Steve is that it sounds like a complete crock. Even if some of the files are in printed form, they can just be run through a scanner – my automatic page feed scanner can process a page every few seconds, even cheap scanners can process thousands of pages per day. If the files are too big to put in an email (likely), for trivial cost NOAA could publish them on a password protected web page – it would take at most a day to set up such a web page, and add the files to it.”
The request has nothing to do with your IT experience. It involves more than gathering up a few computer files as Goddard apparently went on a fishing expedition with a broad request. That almost always fails.
“The National Environmental Information Center (which includes the former National Climatic
Data Center) has access to a subset of the requested records. Very few if any letters, phone logs,
memos, and other communications on this subject would be available. Historical internal and
external emails are archived, though they are expensive to access and analyze due to unsupported
technology.
As data stewardship – including homogeneity adjustments – has been central to NCDC’s mission
for decades, determining which records are responsive to this extremely broad request will
require significant resources. Responding to this part of the request would require retrieving,
reviewing, and packaging many tens of thousands of items in at least 29 years of
communications, if they can be located”
he has an option
“Another option based on your request is to narrow your scope or update the description of what
you are asking for. If you agree to narrow your scope or update your request, please contact me
and I will set up a teleconference between you and the lead on this task”
Complete nonsense. This data is being used to formulate policy that will have a dramatic impact on the economy of the US. If they have already accessed all of this previous data to use in recent studies, and then had reason to “adjust” the prior year data, then this should be easily available and retrievable, complete with explanations as to why the data needed to be “adjusted.” This is clearly nothing but stonewalling. Why do people stonewall? I’d love to see Steve Mosher tell the IRS that their audit request for his previous years financial data was to difficult and expensive to retrieve. I bet you would have great success with that. But with all the taxpayer funds being used to keep this agency operating, and supposedly being so scientific and data intensive, it is beyond belief that this kind of dissembling is tolerated. I think you are part of the problem.