March 30 is worldwide Document Freedom Day! Why should you care? What does this mean to you anyway? Read on and discover something new for the day..

For democracy to be truly representative and effective, citizens must be able to access the information governments use for decision making and operating. Much of our work involves accessing sensitive government data then cleaning and presenting those data in a way that educates the community and public agencies and can improve the decision making process- often called data-driven decision making. In order for residents of a community to gain meaningful access to government data, those data and documents need to be made available in formats that are actually usable by regular folks and techies alike, hence the need for Open Standards and Document Freedom efforts. Too many government agencies still use practices like  responding to a Public records Act request by delivering boxes of photocopied papers - following the letter of the law but making every effort possible to stifle transparency and openness.