North Dakota State Employees (2019 - 2022)

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the North Dakota Open Records Law, I hereby request the following records:

Monthly electronic listings of all employees of the North Dakota Executive Branch from January 1, 2019 to the present. Specifically, I am seeking electronic listings of all individuals employed within the offices of the Governor and Lieutenant Governor and all state agencies, commissions, and departments for each month from January 1, 2019 to May 31, 2022.

For each month, I’m seeking a spreadsheet, database, or delimited text file(s) — not paper records or a PDF created from data — with the following fields for each employee: full legal name, unique employee identification code, title, department or agency, race, gender, full-time/part-time status, location, hire date, termination date, civil service status, and gross annual salary. If you cannot produce any of these fields, please let me know and generate only the available variables.

If these data are not available at monthly intervals, please produce the datasets at the most frequent interval possible. For example, if the data is not available monthly, please produce the data at quarterly intervals.

In addition, please include any lookup tables that may be needed to interpret the data. For example, if departments are listed with codes linked to a separate table, I will be happy to join the records myself, rather than require your staff to do so.

I am comfortable working with large data sets and can receive the records in a variety of formats (.dbf, .csv, .mdb, etc).

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 10 business days.

Sincerely,

Ben Goehring

Hi Lynn,

Thanks so much for your assistance. I really appreciate it!

Take care,
Ben

Dear Lynn,

I hope it was a good weekend. I am following up on this request from a few months ago with a quick question. Is it possible to receive a copy of these data that includes employees' dates of birth -- or is that not publicly available?

Thanks!
Ben

Hi Lynn,

I apologize for the double email -- but I have one other question in addition to the one about employees' dates of birth.

The data you sent me includes two date variables: eff_date and start_date. Could you please provide me with some additional information about the definitions of these variables? In particular, does start_date mean the date that someone first started working for the state, so it should theoretically never change even if the employee leaves and then comes back?

Thank you for all of your time and assistance -- I really appreciate it.

Best,
Ben

Sounds good -- thanks Lynn!

Best,
Ben

Hi Lynn,

Apologies for another follow up. Are the data you provided last summer snapshots of the state employee roster at the end of each calendar year or fiscal year?

Thanks,
Ben

Great -- thank you!

Ben