# Council Inter Governmental Committee - November 9, 2010 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Council · November 9, 2010 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/1739 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/1739?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2010-11-09 - **Body**: Council - **Last revised**: June 18, 2026 - **Length**: 11,206 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed by OpenAI Whisper-1. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude Sonnet. Speaker labels and verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Inter-Governmental Committee convened on November 9, 2010, at 1:00 P.M. to take up three agenda items, all of which were informational in nature. The meeting covered a State Auditor Procurement Fraud Investigation, a discussion of Open Standards and Open Source Data Policies, and an update on committee items. No presiding officer is identified in the available meeting record. Over the course of the meeting, 1 vote was taken, 1 public comment was heard, and the three agenda items were addressed as informational presentations rather than action items requiring formal approval. ## Attendance The following 10 members were present at the Council meeting on November 9, 2010: - James - Crosbie - Myers - Gray - Blues - Beard - Henson - Feigel - Lawless - Martin No members were recorded as absent or late. ## Votes and Decisions One motion was brought before the Council during this meeting. - **Motion to Create Subcommittee on Ordinance 63-2002** [timestamp: 1:19:13]: Council Member Blues moved to create a subcommittee tasked with reviewing and amending ordinance 63-2002 in accordance with the auditor's recommendations. The motion passed by voice vote. Because this was a voice vote rather than a roll call vote, individual member votes were not recorded. ## Public Comment One member of the public addressed the Council during the public comment period. [timestamp: 1:53:30] - **Chris**, representing **openlexington.org**, spoke on the topic of **open data and government transparency**. Chris expressed interest in engaging with the city to improve how data is made accessible to the public, and referenced ongoing efforts and events related to open data initiatives. No additional public comments were recorded for this meeting. ## Contested Items **Independence of the Internal Audit Board** [timestamp: 1:05:45] The Council engaged in a heated discussion regarding the independence of the Internal Audit Board, with debate centering on whether the board should have its own dedicated budget and the authority to hire and fire its own personnel. The core of the disagreement concerned the degree of autonomy the Internal Audit Board should exercise. Those raising concerns questioned whether the board could effectively carry out its oversight function without independent control over its financial resources and staffing decisions — arguing that without these powers, the board's ability to operate free from outside influence could be compromised. The discussion reflected broader questions about structural independence: an audit body that relies on another entity for its budget and personnel decisions may face limitations on its ability to scrutinize that same entity objectively. The structured data does not specify which individual council members took particular positions in this debate, nor does it record a definitive outcome or resolution reached during the meeting. Readers seeking the full details of who argued which positions and how the discussion concluded are encouraged to consult the meeting video beginning at approximately 1:05:45. ## State Auditor Procurement Fraud Investigation [timestamp: 1:00:06] The Council took up a discussion regarding recommendations from the State Auditor related to a procurement fraud investigation. Council Member Gordon was the key speaker on this agenda item. The discussion centered on the State Auditor's recommendations stemming from the procurement fraud investigation, as well as the procedural steps required before the Council could act on those recommendations. Specifically, Council Member Gordon raised the need to amend the existing ordinance prior to forwarding any actions to the Internal Audit Board. This amendment was identified as a necessary prerequisite to ensure that the Council's response to the State Auditor's findings would be properly routed through the appropriate oversight body. The item was informational in nature, and no final decisions or votes were recorded as an outcome of the discussion. The conversation appeared focused on establishing the correct procedural framework — namely, the ordinance amendment — that would need to be in place before the Council could formally advance any responsive actions to the Internal Audit Board in connection with the State Auditor's procurement fraud findings. ## Open Standards/Open Source Data Policies [timestamp: 1:20:48] This agenda item was brought forward as a discussion on the importance of open data policies for the Council. Council Member Martin led the conversation, emphasizing the significance of open standards and open source data initiatives and their potential implications for the Council's work. Council Member Martin introduced Doug Robinson to provide additional insight and expertise on the subject. Robinson offered perspectives on open data initiatives, speaking to the broader landscape of how open standards and open source data policies are being developed and implemented. The item was informational in nature, with no formal vote or binding decision resulting from the discussion. The conversation appears to have been intended to familiarize the Council with open data concepts and ongoing initiatives rather than to act on a specific proposal. **Key speakers:** - **Council Member Martin** — introduced the topic and framed the discussion around the importance of open data policies - **Doug Robinson** — presented information and insights on open data initiatives The outcome of this agenda item was informational, serving as a foundation for the Council's awareness of open standards and open source data policy considerations. ## Update on Committee Items [timestamp: 1:03:58] The Council took up Agenda Item 3, a general discussion on updates related to committee items. Council Member Myers was the primary speaker during this portion of the meeting. The discussion covered two notable topics: - **Ordinance Changes:** The need for ordinance changes was identified as part of the committee update, though the specific ordinances requiring amendment were addressed within the broader committee context. - **Internal Audit Board:** The role of the Internal Audit Board was also raised as a subject of discussion, indicating that the Council was examining the board's function and responsibilities as part of its committee oversight work. The item was informational in nature, and no formal action or vote was taken as a result of the discussion. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Create a subcommittee to review and amend ordinance 63-2002 according to the auditor's recommendations. --- ## Full transcript Enjoy the rest of the video! Welcome to the PacWest! We're DarkHarbourProduction. Let us know who you want to hear next in the comments! 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Keep it Steezy! Thank you for listening! Subscribe for daily tracks! Keep it Steezy! Thank you for listening! Subscribe for daily tracks! Keep it Steezy! Thank you for listening! Subscribe for daily tracks! Keep it Steezy! Thank you for listening! Subscribe for daily tracks! Keep it Steezy! Thank you for listening! Subscribe for daily tracks! Keep it Steezy! Thank you for listening! Subscribe for daily tracks! Keep it Steezy! Thank you for listening! Subscribe for daily tracks! Keep it Steezy! Thank you for listening! Subscribe for daily tracks! Keep it Steezy! Before we move on, Council Member Gordon. I don't see any, but I just had a comment that I think maybe the first thing that Council would want to do before sending the internal audit, the internal audit actions to the Internal Audit Board would be to amend the ordinance. Get the ordinance amended. Get the new Internal Audit Board in place and then send whatever is determined on here to be an internal audit function to the Internal Audit Board. Well, the Internal Audit Board already has a copy of the audit. It was addressed to them as well, and they have provided a response. So they may very well be independently addressing the recommendations we've made specifically to the board. Of course, that's something that can be, you know, you can make an inquiry into that. But the Internal Audit Board from the onset has had a copy of the report and been able to make whatever adjustments they deem necessary to address our recommendations. So do you think they're already doing the things in here that would be things they're charged with? I can't speak definitively as to what they're actually doing. I haven't had follow-up conversations with the board. But they certainly have it. The recommendations were addressed to them. They have the opportunity to address those. So maybe we shouldn't wait to do the changes in the ordinance, because if a new Internal Audit Board wants to change the things that this current one's done, they have the right to do that. It seems to me just a high priority is to get the ordinance changed. And if, I mean, I'm comfortable, I'm not part of the committee, but just my opinion is that if they're working on some of these recommendations, then those could proceed, and then the new ordinance could kick in once we've done that. And any new board members or new changes that they might want to make could keep going. Just one statement I'd like to make regarding our recommendation to expand the Internal Audit Board. We did that in order to try to provide a further opportunity for community involvement and expand independence. We think you all have established a good model here where there is an opportunity for an independent organization to review information and to address issues that come before it. We thought this was an opportunity just to expand on what had been done. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I have a recommendation for the committee to consider for motion. Dealing with what Council Member Gordon just talked about, about going ahead and move forward with the ordinance change, I don't believe there's another scheduled InterGov committee meeting for the rest of this session. Do I have one more? I have one in December. Okay. So. Okay. Oh, okay. We're sharing a day. So I'd like to see if we can get that ordinance available at that InterGov committee and bring it forward during this session because I do believe that that is something that we do need to have in place before a new Internal Audit Board takes their seat. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Likens, one of the things that was discussed, certainly with the Special Investigative Committee, and I've heard Council Members discuss this, and I've also heard the Internal Audit Board discuss the issue of independence. If you recall, there were a lot of questions during the interviews of the Special Investigative Committee regarding the scope of independence of the Board and its responsibilities with respect to does it just supervise the audit process or the auditor and the employees in the Division of Auditing? And if you recall, having watched the tapes, there were a lot of questions about the Director of the Audit Board has his time card approved and his vacation time and those kinds of things approved by the Senior Advisor to the Mayor. But in terms of filling out a yearly evaluation and those type of things, that's not done by a member of the Administration. So I think we have the only Board such as this set up, I think in the country, or at least we had the first one in the country and maybe the only one still, do you have any recommendations for us with respect to whether or not the Board ought to be given even more independence so that it has its own budget? It actually hires and fires the personnel in the Audit Department and provides their evaluations and raises and the whole like. That would truly make it independent rather than this kind of quasi-independence that we have right now. Independence is a key element in any audit process, internal, external, because you need to be able to make an assessment of your information based on the factors that you provide without any external pressures coming to bear. Having said that, I think how that's handled and how that's addressed is just really a legislative issue to be discussed as to how that would be approached, both through a budget process, because there would have to be a budget allocation for that, and I think that's an internal discussion. My statement to that, to you, would just be to ensure that the independence of the organization is not in any way impaired so that it doesn't have the ability to independently perform their process. Well, I think that's still a question that we have to answer, because I think there's a point at which the auditor gave some information to the administration and based it on the fact that that was senior management with respect to the agreement with the external auditor. So, and I think that's part of where that decision came down or ruling came or opinion came down that the council was third party. So we never did establish in those meetings who the real supervisor is for the auditor, and because we still don't know if anybody ever does an evaluation on that particular position. And so if we're going to talk about independence and not being impeded, then somehow we have to figure out who does that person's review and who supervises that person, because they are still a civil service employee of the government. So there's certain laws that need to be followed in that regard. It seems like historically the way this position is operated is that no one in the administration or the council does a unit review on the person. So it's not clear who manages that person, and I guess we need to figure that out so that we can understand it, one, and make sure that that person gets a review and those kinds of things, but also that what's put in place doesn't impede that person and that office from doing its work. One thing that may assist is a fresh look at ordinance number 63002, which in part states that in the bylaws that the board is to supervise, coordinate, evaluate, monitor, and implement, and it goes on to say the internal audit function. And so what is encompassed in that internal audit function? Because the council has perceived it as the function was, because if you look at what the board does, the auditor brings to the board a list of things that need to be audited. And really the big responsibility for the board is to determine where in the priority list and the pecking order those things happen. When a new special investigation is suggested and they do their snapshot and say, yes, it needs to be looked at, where do we go from there? But the board has never been asked to supervise anybody or discipline anybody or, you know, provide recommendations for raises for anybody or those kinds of things. So yeah, the day-to-day operations, exactly. But at the same time, it sounds like there's nobody in the administration doing that either. And if that's something that really moves us forward, that's got to be a part of it. And so how do we, you know, where do we go from here on that aspect of it? Because we want to maintain the independence, but that person does need somebody to supervise them. And I think one of the first steps I would take, and this is just my suggestion, is to discuss with, I would discuss with the internal audit board collectively, representatives from the council exactly how that process takes place. What's envisioned? What responsibility do they take on? And maybe collectively you can determine how that should move forward so that instead of any situation where different parties are at odds, they come to a conclusion together as to how that will be addressed. One of the questions that was put forth is how your office, it may be different because she's elected, though, but how does your office deal with that? We obviously have a budget, and we have other criteria and statutes, policies, procedures, Kentucky administrative regulations that we have to follow as well. We are an independent organization, but we are attached to the general government area for administrative purposes, for budget purposes, and those types of things. That's true of the other constitutional offices as well. And so even though we are an independent organization, we still go through the same legislative budget process. The human resources policies apply to us as they do any other general state government employee. The travel regulations, those types of things apply to us as well as there are certain separations that are taken into consideration in certain aspects of our operation given our independence and what we're able to do and the independence we can choose depending on related to systems within our office or other things that help us produce our work. But organizationally we're attached to general government. We go through a legislative budget process and all the other, to the vast extent we follow all the other human resources and other policies and procedures that are put in place. So do you think it can work, I know this is maybe a question not for you to answer, but looking at this big picture, maybe we really do need to look at giving that board a budget and allowing them to do the same HR processes, hire and fire employees there, supervise those employees on a day-to-day and provide their annual reviews and all those things and truly separate it out. Obviously it has to follow the same laws that other divisions of government have to follow, but give that board that autonomy to do all those things. Okay. Thank you a lot, I appreciate it. Thank you for the opportunity. We have one more question. Council Member Lawless. It seems to me that this is really an extremely important and critical function of good government. And I'm wondering if we would be better off taking some time, looking at what the investigative committee suggested, which in many ways was similar to this, but possibly also taking the time to really look at other communities and best practices and ways to do this, rather than try to get something that in a hurry that may not work. Or we may find ourselves in a similar position in three or four years, which wasn't anticipated when this was changed in 2002. So I guess I would rather go slow and steady and carefully and also examine what the investigative committee kind of meshed the two and get some research done. That's just my, but it really wasn't a question for you. Thank you so much. Thanks, Brian. And I'll clarify what my recommendation was. Specifically the ordinance number 63-2002, to see how that needs to be changed in order to be able to implement some of the recommendations and pursue the research and review and all that, the recommendations that were there. But nothing to harm the process in the future, but only to aid it. Okay. I'm sorry, I misunderstood. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have one question on that note. When you guys did your audit, did you ever kind of just stop and look at our process, since I think it is the only one in the country? Does it make sense? Is it the best way to do it? How this is established is somewhat unique, but I also think it was established in order to create independence and to establish a process by which there is a board that helps make decisions on what the audit objectives will be, what the audit plan will be, what audit special requests are addressed. And so to that end, I think the process that was instituted was a process that went from having nothing in the audit process to having a process in place as to how that would be handled to creating an independent process. Now you're faced with some decisions, I think, in order to look at how you may enhance that process to address situations that have come up recently and to ensure that they're not replicated moving forward. And that was a great diplomatic answer. But the question really is, when you look at our process and you look at the rest of the processes across the state, do you think that this process is, I mean, would you recommend, when you guys did the airport audit, everybody in the state wanted to talk to you guys to figure out what all you were saying, because it made sense and it was a good way to do best practices. So when you look at this process that we have, would you recommend this to another community, another, like Louisville or northern Kentucky that's trying to put together an audit process, would you say the way to go about this is the way that Lexington did it, or would you say the way to go about it is the way that XYZ City is doing it? I think really what works best, and I'm really not trying to be diplomatic in this answer, it's just I think what works best is what works well for that particular governing body, depending on the size and the organization, the capability, the budget and the staffing. As I said before, there wasn't a lot to compare to within the state, because there's not a tremendous number of organizations that are local governments that have internal audit function. You're certainly ahead of the process, because you have that independent watchdog internally to be able to look out for these, or address these types of issues. You also have a process where it's very clear that you wanted an independent process. That's a benefit, that's a plus. And so my answer before was really you have something here that seems to be working for you, it's just that there are some issues and some items that were identified throughout our audit and issues that came up recently that allow you to enhance the process in order to address situations that weren't foreseen before. So, you know, do I think you have a poor process or, you know, we've never indicated that throughout our audit. And it just seems as though it's something that you're this far down the road in implementing, it's something that you can look at, and with some adjustments and communication, you can enhance it to be even more of what you want it to be. Okay. Thank you. Thank you all. I appreciate your time. Thanks, Brian. Appreciate you. Council Member Blues. To ask the chair of the Intergovernmental Committee to create a subcommittee of this committee to review 63-2002 and to amend it in accordance with the auditor's recommendations 7, 8, and 9. And to bring that proposed revision back to the committee, the full committee. So moved. There's a motion and a second for me to create a subcommittee, reference 63-2002 and amend it according to the report. Any discussion on that? Only discussion I would have is I would need volunteers to be part of the subcommittee. It's been difficult in the past to get people to volunteer, so I don't know if those times are available. So as long as we have people willing to volunteer, that sounds great to me. Well, I think you should use your considerable powers as chair to appoint. Okay. Thanks. All right. All in favor of that motion? Aye. Anything else on that issue? Any other motions, recommendations? Just so you know, you'll have in your inbox the 63-2002. Sarah has already sent that to the full committee. And I'll be taking names of anyone that would like to volunteer for the subcommittee. If you can let me know before work session today would be great, but definitely before Tuesday, before I report out. All right. Next item is Open Standards, Open Source Data Policies by Council Member Martin. We had this last month, and we see it again. Thank you, Madam Chair. To bring folks up to speed, data is a valuable asset that the public already has paid for. And making this data and non-private parts of the data available to the public in an accessible machine readable format helps both transparency of government, but it also helps create new software products and new companies. I've invited today Doug Robinson, who is the Executive Director of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers. And ASCIO's offices are here in Lexington and are in fact right across the street. And this is really a very substantial amount of expertise to have just right across the street here in Lexington. And I invite Mr. Robinson here to sort of give the council an update and an overview on a white paper I think that ASCIO has called A Call to Action for State Government Guidance for Opening Doors to State Data. I also passed out to the council a draft, and I'm not proposing that we vote on this today because obviously no one has seen this before. But this is a modified version of the resolution adopted by the Portland City Council last year. I was very tied up in election matters until last week, and so I didn't get it circulated. I thought it needed redrafting and some work, and actually the law department did a very good job. I didn't have to do anything to it. But I hope to see it, kind of look where we're headed. This is, again, something that the Portland City Council adopted last year. I did take out of this the sort of open source type of procedures where software is developed in an open format and the city adopts it. I think there's some issues that I would not be comfortable with because I don't have a lot of expertise going in that direction. But this does address the open data part of that, and given that, I will let Mr. Robson come and talk to us. Thank you for coming. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Martin. Madam Chair, members of the committee, pleasure to be here. Appreciate the opportunity to walk across the street, basically. Thank you to our frequent flyer miles for coming across the street, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you. But I think a very important subject, and I'll talk a little bit about the overarching kind of what I'll call civic engagement and business drivers around open data, but more importantly, that open data is really a subset of what we've seen over the past six or seven years, which is a greater emphasis on government transparency. State government, in fact, I appreciate the opportunity to follow Brian Likens. He and I worked together as colleagues when I was in state government. He was in the auditor's office, and they're a top-notch group over in the auditor's office, and although at some times we were on the opposite side of some of their rulings, I know that they do a great job. So this is another aspect of good government, and it really relates to the assets of government, and primarily being one of the most strategic assets of any public sector organization, particularly state and local government, is the data, and the data that rests inside. And for many, many years, this data was essentially encapsulated. It was captured in proprietary formats and paper documents and in forms that were not available to the general public, not available to small business, to innovators, to entrepreneurs, to the press, other forms of media, and certainly with the advent of technology, the Internet, ubiquitous nature of access now, and high levels of use by the general public, then you have this capability. And in some cases, some would argue, based on what we've seen, particularly in state government and the federal government, a mandate, a mandate by the people, but also a mandate by our leadership to make this data available. So what I thought today is cover some of the high points. This is a book paper which we released now over a year ago, which covered, again, kind of a call to action directed at states for opening the doors to state data and a set of guidance, and this is really around what I call the architecture or the blueprint for better government on how to do that and guidance to states, but I think all in all, if you look through this, that all of these recommendations apply equally to local governments. I've been involved recently in the open data initiatives. The leaders around the country really have been the states, along with D.C. city government, and certainly most recently in the last year, the federal government, as Vivek Kundra, the new CIO, brought that vision to the federal government and started data.gov. And so what we're talking about really is a set of principles that you would examine around what data would be made available to the public. Again, there is a tremendous amount of data in the urban county government. Right now, I would suspect, like many other organizations, it's distributed within those lines of business, what I like to call the cylinders of excellence. Some people call them business silos. Those cylinders of excellence have a lot of data. That data is probably available in some way or format, particularly through the Kentucky Open Records Act, that's easily readable and digestible, and most importantly, it can be found. I mean, I think that's what we find in most governments is data is really, in terms of being made available, is very difficult to find. And so the open government data initiative is really around finding aids. It's about formatting the data and making it available to the public. And we find this manifested in a number of states that have begun this process and now have literally hundreds of data sets available. So what's different than what we've traditionally done in the last, let's say, decade, where we've made reports available and content available? That content's been made available, but it's been in a proprietary format, meaning it's in a format that can't be dissected. It's in a Word document. It's in a PDF, an Adobe PDF, which is a fixed proprietary format. It requires, again, the user to have that if they want to look at budget. The open data initiative really argues for non-proprietary formats that can be easily digested by the end user. That might be a small business that wants to match up data. That might be someone who has capabilities with GIS and wants to map restaurant inspections to a particular map. So they might, again, join those two data sets and mash them up for added public value. So the intent behind, again, finding these principles is the fact that, first and foremost, you want the data to be easily findable and discoverable, and you want it to be in a format that can be ingested. So you might have, for example, a list of employee salaries, which is about one of the top areas of transparency in terms of open data, but that would be made available in a way that it could be ingested by a product that someone might use in their home or in their business. So, again, it argues for a little bit of planning and design before you launch these. But, again, we would argue, based on our work in white paper, that this can be done very, very easily. What we would look at is what are the principles around that, and one is we know the data exists, but it's distributed. It's decentralized. And so what we would argue for in terms of design parameter is go out and find all this data. And create a pointer system or a finding aid that allows you to point to that data and get the stakeholders, and by that I mean the internal agencies and those other agencies, in fact, funded by the urban county government involved in this process, and make their data available as well, make it discoverable in a way that can be easily used by the public so they don't have to have sophisticated tools that could be easily digested by, in fact, the media for civic engagement, volunteer groups, again, for entrepreneurs, for small businesses, and others who might use this data to actually create a business. So it's a relatively straightforward process in terms of looking at what's available in the state, in the urban county government, treasure trove of information, using the guidance that we've provided in our white paper around steps towards success, and then identifying those feedback loops, and that's critically important, to get the public, all those folks that have interest in this data, to provide you with a feedback on what they would like to see prioritized. You might have economic development data, you might have restaurant inspection or regulatory data, you might have data about the environment, business permits, other things that you would identify as important. Let the public weigh in and say this is the data that we would like to have. Just last, two weeks ago, Louisville Metro launched their open data portal. It came out of an executive order of the mayor around transparency, and an element of their transparency initiative is open data. So they've already begun to populate their open data site with a small number. So this is an area where you can start very small, and you can grow with larger data sets, you can add more sophistication, and, again, make it very valuable. I will tell you the experience among the state and local units of government is this is slow to grow, is that you will find some early users, particularly in the media, and other advocacy groups and volunteer groups, and then eventually it will become much more useful. You'll see entrepreneurs, many cities such as Washington, New York, and San Francisco have had contests around what small firms, technology firms, and university, you have a great lab right down the street here at the University of Kentucky, and they have found that many of the university students like to dig into this data and create value-added, perhaps iPhone apps, perhaps other data sets, mashups, which is the combination of multiple data sets to create an added value, that the university students seem to have a lot of fun with this and create products that, in fact, can be added value and, in fact, may be then used by the urban county government. So before I get into any more specifics, I think I will stop and certainly provide you with, be glad to provide you with some general principles of design, but also some of the things we're seeing in terms of the future phases of this, where early adopters such as some of these cities and states have now gone even one step further to talk about kind of a vision for the future around data. But again, I'd like to stop there. That was a long opening remark with a lot of information. Thank you. You definitely educated me on some of the benefits of it. Thank you for doing that. We'll have questions in the questions from councilmembers now, so anybody can hit their button if they'd like to speak. Councilmember Blues has a question. Thank you, Madam Chair. This does sound very promising, and the more information we can make available, obviously, the better. But as I gather, what you're suggesting is that we would need some kind of body, government-citizen combination that would perhaps to establish some priorities and some starting points. We'd need, I would guess, what's the word, translators to make this data more accessible to the, you know, to the recipients of it. And I would imagine that we'd need some money, and I wonder if you could give us some, you could talk about what we might be looking at in terms of immediate and perhaps more down-the-road costs for such an initiative. Let me address those, Councilmember. Certainly you would want to begin with what I'll call a governance body. That could involve internal and external. I think initially you could simply involve internal stakeholders, but that would be obviously the CIO and others, along with the lines of business in the urban county government, first and foremost. Identify, I will tell you, just to make an assumption, that this data exists. It exists in a variety of formats, and so it's out there. You just have to identify that. So identifying those data sets is critically important. That can be done internally. And once you've done that, you want to prioritize those. What would be important? It may be, for example, I can tell you based on surveys, what are the two most important points of data that most citizens want. One is performance, what I'll call performance measurement or performance outcomes or indicators. For example, it might be how many inspections, you know, the data around inspections, building inspections, restaurant, I know the health department, but anything related to the performance of public programs. That's always number one. Number two is, as a taxpayer, they want to know what you're doing with their money. Now, that may be outside the bounds of raw data at this point. That's more of a broad transparency. But those are generally, and by a wide margin, number one and number two. So they want to know, again, program and performance outcomes and delivery, and they want to know about what are you doing with my tax dollars. And then after that, it drops down significantly to some of the other raw data sets. But I think that's the thing to do, is to use a set of questions around the data and determine, because you can't start out by swallowing the elephant. You need to take small chunks, and it may be a limited number of data sets. I think Louisville started out with about nine. So a very small number of data sets. So look at that. In terms of the translator function, you most likely have those tools available today, given the number of data sets. In the open formats, many of the products that you have, the software products today, have export functions, and it's simply exporting that. So if it's in a Word document, you're simply exporting that to an XML format. Technical, but that's easily enough done. If it's in an Excel spreadsheet, again, easily exported to a comma-separated value, something which is a format that is open, that many other software products can use and can be interpreted. So I think that you have most of the tools today to get to those data sets and create raw sets that can be exposed out on the Internet without any additional cost. Again, I'd say in terms of funding and sustainability, most governments that I know have spent very, very little around their open data initiative. And again, I would certainly put you in contact with the folks that I know leading the Louisville initiative, and I think you'll find that they've spent very little, if anything, on that. They've simply identified the data sets. They've gone to the constituent agencies, and they've said, you know, you're the cognizant custodian for this data. We'd like for you to provide it to us in this format, or if it's on your agency website, we want to point to it in an open format. So again, it's not a very expensive proposition. Again, in order to reduce any upfront costs, start very small and then grow. But your good question is all three of those are critical decision points to look at. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair. You're welcome. Counselor Baird. After 54 years in banking business and elsewhere, you mentioned salary information being available. And we have, through many, many years, long before I started in banking, as it was, that everything has changed. I mean, you know, we're not talking about the same thing. That was all kept very quiet and very private. Now, I can understand that the public would want to know what individuals make. And I would offer a suggestion on that. And that would be, you know, everybody is assigned a code number for what their classification is. And within that, there's a low, a medium, and a high. To be able to, and that's the public, I wouldn't have much to say about that. I do have a problem with handing the very specific salary information to the public, though. Counselor Baird, that's a good reservation. I believe urban county government salaries are already available. Are they not? They've already been hijacked by the Herald-Leader. Yeah, it's already made available. So I think what's happened in many jurisdictions is they've taken a more preemptive approach and decided that, as Louisville has done, that they're going to expose that salary data on their own, with their own terms and conditions. So I think it just depends. And the difference here is it's made available in a raw, large, raw file of data that can be manipulated, as opposed to a searchable, single database search function like you do with the Herald-Leader and other media outlets that have taken that on as a public service. I can see it starting some catfights and such within certain departments when it's found out that Sally and Susie don't make the same amount of money. And as soon as that goes up, we'll probably crash the system with all the employees, find out what their bosses make and everything else. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Anything, Councilman Martin? Okay. Well, thank you. Do you have anything else you want to add? Oh, he's just starting. I would just add a couple of items around looking at some of the already capabilities in urban county government. I guess I would definitely urge you to look at GIS, the creation of visual data is very important, and also being able to provide your GIS data in a format that can be used by, again, other public and private sector bodies in a non-proprietary, again, there's a format, there's an open standard that GIS data can be converted and made available. Urban county government has a very good and well-respected GIS capability, and I think I would certainly look at that across all the data sets. And that's kind of the visualization piece. Certainly looking at the capability of on-the-fly creating charts, graphs, other visuals from the raw data that you would make available. And again, these are things as you build your capacity, I would certainly look at that as one. The other would be use of social media to get the word out. So as the urban county government uses tools like Facebook and Twitter and SlideShare and others, YouTube, that this raw data also be integrated in terms of its availability onto those tools, and we're seeing that happen in a number of jurisdictions, so we think that's important. I think certainly, you know, always want to keep privacy and confidentiality in mind related to these data sets, making sure that you're only, you know, making data available in raw format that is redacted from any personal information or any confidential corporate information that's available. So those are some of the things that you want to look at, and I think making sure that you at least establish up front, I don't think right off the bat that you have to have a metadata standard, and the metadata is the data about the data. That's really what I'll call the pedigree about the data, but I think it's important to understand that you need to document where the data came from, who's the originator of the data, what the date of the generation is, so you want to refresh this. So open data initiatives, I tell people, need to be like donuts. They need to be fresh, and so you need to constantly refresh the data. So as you come out with new data every month, you want to make sure that your open data initiative replaces, and you can have historical data, because there are people who want to look at historical trends, but most folks want to look at the most current. They don't want to look at a restaurant inspection from four years ago. That's not very valuable. They want to look at the most current. They want to look at the most current building permits. They want to look at the most current economic data, jobs data, any data that you collect that you believe would be valuable from an economic perspective. I've been involved in a collaboration with Harvard and the Harvard Kennedy School with a project called, it's a tough times project, a symposium, and we just produced this white paper and released this last month, and we looked at eight major trends in 2011 during this transition, particularly with midterm elections in the states, but these, again, qualify for really, I think, consideration by federal, local jurisdiction, and this group had representatives from all those jurisdictions working with the Harvard policy group to come out with what we called eight major moves for the next year, and in terms of what governments can do in terms of performance and technology and governance, and one of those moves is open government. We believe that that's definitely a major move that jurisdictions should embrace. We have a broad expectation from the public that government should be more transparent and more open. Open data is a really good element of that transparency, and it shows that you are good stewards of the taxpayer dollar by making that data available. So, again, I invite you to certainly glance at the white paper, really good look at the recommendations in the back, because they really summarize the steps that we should, that we really should take, and then I know that Council Member Martin has other jurisdictions that I'm aware of New York and Portland and Washington and San Francisco and a number of other local government jurisdictions that are all involved in open data initiatives, including most recently Louisville just a couple of weeks ago. So I'd be glad to provide contact information for the ones that we're aware of. Do you know Rama, our IT director? I just met Rama. I know we have the resolution here that looks like a supportive resolution, but I think it's probably more productive to talk to the administration or the Lex Ray committee, I don't, besides the supportive resolution which I believe should come from maybe even the Lex Ray, just to have the Lex Ray committee review that to see if this is on target with what their objectives are. I don't know the legislative process that would be involved in helping and hearing this again. I mean, it came back up in our committee, but I don't really know what we can do from this committee. Well, I was going to make a motion at the next meeting to send this resolution on to Council for approval. And I think that we as the Urban County Council should be leaders in bringing government to a more open and transparent data policy. And so this is something that follows in the footsteps of the Portland City Council from last year. And I'm not going to make the motion today because I wanted folks to take a look at it, but I would ask that we keep it on the docket for just one more time and to send this to the, to consider this by the Intergovernmental Committee at the next meeting. I did have a question for Mr. Robinson. You and I talked briefly about the regional nature of this. Could you maybe sort of describe it just very briefly? I think folks may want a little bit of a break, but what you had mentioned to me about the regional implications of this. I mean, it is open data. That initiative is certainly an element of broader government transparency, but it can clearly go on its own, as we've seen in many jurisdictions. Certainly that's been the case in states where they've taken on open data before they had a broad transparency initiative. But I think what we're seeing is in terms of what I'll call cross-boundary collaboration. It's a great opportunity here for the metropolitan area to benefit from leadership of Lexington in terms of, you know, Lexington creating, again, a portal or a web presence where this data can be exposed in a way, but also then reach out to the surrounding counties and cities, reach out to Clark County and Winchester and talk to them. I suspect that they have data. That data may not be available on their website. I suspect not, although I haven't investigated that. So that it can be a regional view of the world, and I think that would be very important. And again, it would be what we're seeing in other areas is broader collaboration. Perhaps Lou Grassad and others can help that. But certainly the key metropolitan area here would be, I think, very important to have them involved in these regional discussions. And I'm just suggesting that as part of this initiative as well. University of Kentucky, and it struck me, that's another, University of Kentucky does have some data available. But I know, for example, in looking at the site that Louisville, Jefferson County, Louisville Metro just brought up a week or so ago, that one of their links is to, again, the University of Louisville transparency site. So it's the, again, the location. But that aggregation, that broader view, I think is really important. So you could, again, either get data from the university, or simply if they have open data already available, make sure that's linked on your site so that people can see a larger picture of what's going on in the region and not just Fayette County. Okay. Let me ask Rama a question. Have you had a chance to take a look at the resolution, the draft resolution? No. Okay. We'll make sure you get a copy of it. What's the progress of the Lex Ray committee, and do you feel like it overlaps with what you've heard today? I don't think it overlaps with what we've heard today. I think it's a nice resolution. We'll be glad to take it and insert it into the committee and let them know these are things probably we need to take into consideration. The goal of the committee is to start working on things that we can put out immediately, and then in the long term, what are we going to recommend? And then we'll get back in before we can make that available. We certainly want to help. Well, when the Lex Ray committee began, was there discussion about that you would want to bring something to council at some point, a supportive resolution or something like that to get council on board with it? Well, we were going to take the recommendation to the executive branch, and then they would bring it to council. That was the approach that was taken, but if you wish to do something, we'll be glad to entertain that. Okay. Councilman Myers has a question for you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to make a motion to send this resolution to Rama's committee and let their committee look at it and absorb it and then bring a motion. Okay. We can do it next time. Okay. Yeah, it will stay in committee. We'll keep it in committee at this point. So it just has this kind of, it just has a feel of two separate tracks instead of, you know, coming together and merging together. And I think as the committee we are just a little uncomfortable with moving forward without utilization of this group that has already been formed, is already working when they are privy to more information than we are. It's been nice to get informed about it, but it just feels like it could work together on the other end, not necessarily the legislative end at this point. I thought it was, particularly with Doug Robinson across the street, it was an important thing to sort of educate ourselves about, because this is new to me as well. But being that I was not going to make a motion to approve this resolution, my intention has always been to take it to the Lexray committee and let them look at it and then come back next month. And so I don't know when they are meeting again or come back at a future meeting. But we are talking about the same thing. And I think that's a. Okay. We just need to get a copy to Rama. If I may just ask Council Member Doug Martin, would it be okay if we asked Mr. Robinson to serve as well? I can take it up to the mayor and see if he can expand the committee. Then he would be part of it. Mr. Robinson is an authority on the national level, and he is the Executive Director of the National Association of State Information Officers. And I don't know if he really wants to dig down on the local level of where we are, but I would certainly welcome him. But I think that we have certainly imposed on him greatly. He travels extensively, and we were just frankly just lucky to catch him in town today. I don't know if he can maybe stop by and maybe share his expertise or share some of his resources. But I would love for him to be involved in whatever way, shape or form he could. Thank you. Thanks, Rama. Thanks for following up on that. Sorry about your lack of quorum. You have another comment? Okay. All right. Anything further? Is there anybody else in the audience that wanted to talk on this particular issue? Thank you. You can step to the mic, please. State your name. Hi. My name is Chris, and I'm with a group of citizens, openlexington.org. We've been engaged, trying to engage the city since April of this year. Started actively engaging earlier this year. It's a group of citizens, a couple dozen of us have grouped up over the year. Would love to work with the city, get more engaged. Advocate or produce this data in a more viable form, such as grass and so forth. Would like to point out, we did originally forward the Portland resolution to Doug Martin. Removing the open source piece, I believe, shows his lack of understanding of the need for open data. I'd also like to point out, since July, we have requested a copy of the budget data, which is on the site in PDF, in CSV or Excel format, have yet to receive that. So I want to show how the government's working there. As far as the committee, there's been a press release. There's not been anything else posted about the committee or what they're doing. I know there have been meetings. Other things that are happening nationally, San Francisco is just voting today on their resolution. So that actually has not happened. There's an international open data conference in D.C., November 15th through the 17th, that some people from Lexington will be attending. Your group? Yes. And hopefully some people from the city would be great for that. There's a large national thing happening where cities are getting together to work on this together collaboratory. And we have a website started for that called citycamplex.org. And that's scheduled to happen in the spring of next year. Last time I checked, there was about 27 cities and it seemed like that was growing. What that's going to do is they're going to get together and try to create software that all cities can use and give that away. Part of the open source piece that would reduce cost. And I just wanted to see how we can become more engaged with the city and let you guys know that we're here. Okay. Customer Myers, he has a question for you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Have you or anybody from your group attended any of the meetings of this committee? The Lex Ray, they posted that it was not open for people. Here comes Rama. I think he's got a different take on that. We've had two meetings. And the initial meetings we were talking about how to set up everything to move forward. And we did decide in the second meeting we would invite folks from the private sector or other groups to come in and make their recommendations. And in fact, we have somebody from Open Lexington in our group. I believe Todd Wiley, is he in your group? We do have a member from their committee in Lex Ray. And we're just getting started. So I would appreciate some patience and we'll get it going. Absolutely. I think we, one, two, now we lost, do we have quorum yet? Only if we can count. Council Member Lane. You guys want to sit down for quorum? Okay. Council Member Lane refuses to complete our quorum for us. Did you have anything additional, Council Member Martin? Well, we can address, Rama, do you mind talking about the open source just 30 seconds? Because I think folks need to take a break before the work session. Open source, because I think that open source is something that we should look at through the Lex Ray and continue to examine. But I'm just discussing with a number of local folks, you and some other local folks, that they had some concerns about whether the city would be pursuing that immediately. Well, our concern is simple. I mean, when you're getting into open source software and we have to embrace it, and we have embraced it on the operating system side over here, but we're moving cautiously because we're a risk-averse entity. And at the end of the day, if we need a maintenance agreement and we need to call somebody for support and we can't do it in an open source environment, I mean, that creates some concerns for us. So while we want to embrace it, we're moving cautiously on that front. The data, open data stuff is something we can move ahead. We know we can do that. We have the data with a little bit of, you know, raw data sets that we can move out, we can work on it. So that's the only concern we have. We're not against it. Ramit, does the Lex Ray committee meet before our next intergov, which would be a month from now? We meet on the 18th. Once a month is what they're currently meeting. Obviously we're in a transition phase here, so I'll have to have a couple more meetings and discuss how we're going to move forward. We might make some changes to it. Okay. If you will make sure to get the draft from Councilmember Martin, and if you don't have an approval of the draft at that point, if you just give us some feedback during our next intergov as to, you know, where it is in the process of the Lex Ray committee and how you feel about it and any recommendations for the committee moving forward. All right. We'll take a look at it at the next meeting and get back to you. Appreciate it. Thank you. I'm taking we're adjourned. We're finished with our agenda items and we've lost a quorum. So see you at work session. Thanks. Thank you.