Facts and Procedural History:

For purposes of simplification, the information presented by the person who requested this opinion and the response from the government entity with which the person disagrees are presented in summary form. Copies of the complete submissions are on file at the offices of IPA and, with the exception of any data that are not public, are available for public access.

On July 9, 2001, IPA received a letter from Kevin Pachl. In this letter, Mr. Pachl asked the Commissioner to issue an advisory opinion regarding his right to gain access to certain data maintained by the Minnesota Department of Children, Families Learning (CFL.)

In response to Mr. Pachl's request, IPA, on behalf of the Commissioner, wrote to Christine Jax, Commissioner of CFL, in her capacity as responsible authority for purposes of Minnesota Statutes, Chapter 13. The purposes of this letter, dated July 24, 2001, were to inform her of Mr. Pachl's request and to ask her to provide information or support for CFL's position. On August 9, 2001, IPA received a response from Tammy L. Pust, Assistant Commissioner of CFL. A summary of the facts of this matter follows.

In a letter dated June 5, 2001, Mr. Pachl wrote to Commissioner Jax and asked to inspect certain public data. As of the date of his opinion request, CFL had not responded.

In her response to the Commissioner, Ms. Pust wrote:

A check of the Department's records confirms that CFL received Mr. Pachl's letter via facsimile transfer on June 5, 2001 and that the request was forwarded to the agency's Data Practices Compliance Official. The Data Practices Compliance Official commenced the process necessary to gather the responsive materials. This action was completed on June 20, 2001. On that date and for the ten days thereafter, the agency's attentions were primarily centered on preparing for an unprecedented government shutdown due to the uncompleted Legislative Session. In the course of this activity, the Department inadvertently failed to timely notify Mr. Pachl that his information request had been processed and was available for his inspection at the Department.

According to Ms. Pust, CFL became aware of its failure to make the data available to Mr. Pachl when he called asking about it on July 11, 2001.

Ms. Pust also stated:

In order to avoid similar problems in the future, the Department has taken the following actions:

• The Department will coordinate all requests pursuant to the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act through the Data Practices Compliance Official; and

• The Department is in the process of reviewing and improving the system it utilizes to receive, log, process and respond to data requests in order to ensure that all future requests are handled in accordance with applicable law in the required timeframes.