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Getting information from the federal government is our right under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), however the process is more opaque than you might expect. The Uniform Information Practices Act 92F (Modified) (UIPA) is the State of Hawaii's version of the FOIA. The UIPA.org portal is a way to help individuals through the process of submitting a FOIA request, as well as open sourcing the requests and responses for others to view - all for free!
Before contributing to the project, there are a few things, organizations, and entities that you should be aware of:
- The Freedom of Information Act. Enacted in 1967, this is the federal law that provides the public the right to request records from any federal agency, and where the inspiration of UIPA comes from.
- The "UNIFORM INFORMATION PRACTICES ACT (MODIFIED)" (UIPA). Enacted in 1988, this is the State of Hawaii's version of FOIA (An oversimplification, but 🤷 )
- This "REQUEST TO ACCESS A GOVERNMENT RECORD" form. At the end of the day, this is the form that is submitted to a government agency by the public in request for information.
- The Office of Information Practices (OIP). This is the Hawaii state government agency who administers the UIPA law, and is responsible for ensuring an open government.
- Public First Law Center. This is our local community partner organization for this project, handling many of the legal related questions as well as providing the hosting infrastructure needed to run UIPA.org.
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Open Knowledge Foundation Germany. Involved with the
Code for Germanymovement, this is the organization who publishes the underlying codebase (fork) we are using. For more information, consider reading more here.
The mission of UIPA.org is to democratize access to information and empower citizens by simplifying the process of requesting information under the Uniform Information Practices Act (Modified) (UIPA). UIPA.org has been established as a dedicated portal for the state of Hawaii, aimed at streamlining the process of accessing public records, fostering transparency, and facilitating communication between the government and its constituents.
The benefits:
- Discovery: Most people don't know that certain government agencies exist in the first place. UIPA.org provides a specific set of state/county entities available to be requested
- Ease of use: The objective is to make the process as easy as possible to make requests, removing numerous barriers erected by agencies to discourage requesters from asking questions. The form provided by the Office of Information Practices has the opportunity for mistakes (extending the already extremely long turn around time). Creating a web version should resolve some of the common filling out of the form mistakes. See more forms here
- Transparency: UIPA.org serves a gap in government services for people in Hawaii to find out what is happening in its government. Open sourcing the records request process allows everyone who is interested in the same information to look up previous requests if they are available, or at least their request will help the next person.
The Public First Law Center has put together some excellent resources, in particular, a grouping of some interesting responses from select government agencies, as well as a listing of some common denials, and collected/curated reports from different agencies.
Some relevant readings for a deeper look into the project: