According to Dymalski, Maricopa County is currently re-examining its drive to put all public records online and asking county department to redefine sensitive information so it is not posted willy-nilly on the Web. Until recently, for instance, if a Maricopa resident registered to vote, he would submit his social security number and date of birth and by law that information could be readily sold to any political party and posted on the Web. Now, Maricopa will only supply political parties with the registrant’s name and address and political affiliation.

Maricopa has also instituted a retention policy of keeping data online for only two years. Dymalski says that an automatic purging schedule ensures that most of the sensitive information posted during the county’s technology-ho years has already been removed from the Web. And county departments are currently doing an inventory of all public records to decide what information should not be automatically included in the electronic database. They’re also exploring ways in which IT can help ease the burden of categorizing all that information. “We’re trying to look at ways to standardize divorce paperwork, so we can easily redact social security numbers and other sensitive information before it is posted,” Dymalski said. “Having to go through page after page would take forever.”

In the meantime, Dymalski says, this is something that policy makers should be considering on a state and even national level. “Technology races ahead at the speed of light and the laws necessary to go from a paper world to an electronic world have not been put in place,” he said. “We have to come up with safeguards for this information.”

—Alison Bass