Good Government

Don’t toss that tape.

Just in time for Throwback Thursday, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and Councilman Ben Kallos will introduce legislation today to protect the city’s video archives — including footage on VHS and Betamax tapes.

“Those records would be preserved by the city in whatever format they would choose — my preference would be for digital, my preference would be for open-format,” Mr. Kallos told the Observer Wednesday.

The bill was originally penned by Ms. Brewer when she was in the Council, and it will be introduced on her behalf and by Mr. Kallos.

The city is partnering with several organizations, including the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation and open-data solutions firm Ontodia, to “unlock and analyze municipal decision-making information stored in the City Record — going back more than 15 years,” the city announced. That will include more than 4,000 daily publications of the City Record, which includes data on government procurement, public hearings and meetings as well as hiring.

The law will go into effect in August 2015, but the Department of Citywide Administrative Services is expected to make the necessary changes before then to ensure its timely implementation.

“Hard copies and PDFs of the City Record are distributed daily, but putting the information online in a format that can be analyzed will help us understand the stories behind them,” Council Member Ben Kallos told StateTech.

On Thursday, August 7th, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed new legislation that will start the process of creating a new, data-friendly online portal for the City Record. The bill, introduced by Council Member Ben Kallos, requires the City Record be published in a machine-readable format and be fully searchable. In addition, the administration will, for the first time, formally partner with the civic tech community to ensure the backlog of City Records are in the same format.