PACER Usage (Delaware DOJ)
| Submitted | April 1, 2015 |
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Communications
From: Jonathan Rudenberg
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to Delaware's Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:
I am trying to determine how much money the Delaware Department of Justice is spending on access to federal court documents and other primary legal materials. Specifically, I am requesting copies of:
- Any memoranda or budgetary documents that detail the total amount actually spent or the amount budgeted to be spent by the Delaware Department of Justice to access the PACER system run by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. I am interested in how much was spent or was budgeted to be spent in the period from 2000 to the present, as well as budget items for future fiscal periods.
- Any agreements, contracts, or memoranda of understanding between the Delaware Department of Justice and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts governing access to the PACER system by Delaware Department of Justice staff.
- Any memoranda or other documents from Delaware Department of Justice management to staff asking them to curtail, limit, or otherwise ration their use of the PACER system due to cost considerations.
- Any contracts, memoranda, or budgetary materials detailing the specific agreements and amount of money spent by the Delaware Department of Justice with commercial legal information providers such as Thomson WestLaw, Bloomberg Law, or the Reed Elsevier LexisNexis service. While I understand such commercial legal information providers have more than just federal data, documents pertaining to the amount spent or budgeted, contracts, and memoranda relating to curtailing use because of cost are all relevant to this inquiry.
The requested documents will be made available to the general public free of charge as part of the public information service at MuckRock.com, and is not being made for commercial usage.
In the event that fees cannot be waived, 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 15 business days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Rudenberg
From: MuckRock.com
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 1, 2015. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.
Thank you for your help.
From: Guevarez, Janice (DOJ)
Mr. Rudenberg:
Attached please find a letter from Deputy Attorney General Katisha Fortune in response to your Freedom of Information Act request.
Best Regards,
Janice Guevarez, M.S.
Administrative Specialist II
Department of Justice
820 N. French Street
Civil Division, 6th Floor
Wilmington, DE 19801
Phone: (302) 577-8910
Fax: (302) 577-6630
E-mail: Janice.Guevarez@state.de.us<mailto:Ratana.Kong@state.de.us>
P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail
From: MuckRock
Hi there,
It doesn't seem as though any response was received in regards to the last communication sent on May 13, 2015. Could you please clarify the request's status?
Thanks so much,
Beryl, MuckRock
From: MuckRock.com
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 1, 2015. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: OpenGovernment (DOJ)
The request below indicates that you submitted a request on April 1, 2015 and copied it below, but there was no text to indicate what the request was. Kindly resend and I will look into whether your request was received and if so, what its status is. Please also provide the requester's name.
Best regards,
Kim Siegel
Legislative Affairs Manager
FOIA Coordinator
Delaware Department of Justice
From: Siegel, Kim (DOJ)
Dear Beryl,
We have received some scattered emails, about MuckRock requests. Earlier I sent a message to this email address asking about the April 1 request, which appears to be included here. But this appears to be seeking clarity regarding a FOIA log request, and I do not have the original request for that. Could you please provide the original request?
Many thanks,
Kim Siegel, MPA
Legislative Affairs Manager
FOIA Coordinator
Delaware Department of Justice
302-577-5306
From: OpenGovernment (DOJ)
May 20, 2016
Mr. Jonathan Rudenberg
requests@muckrock.com<mailto:requests@muckrock.com>
Re: Spring 2015 FOIA Requests to the Delaware Department of Justice
Dear Mr. Rudenberg,
You recently requested updates regarding two requests made in spring of 2015. The FOIA deputy and staff who received these requests have since left the Department of Justice and we were not aware that they remained outstanding. We sincerely apologize for the delay and thank you for bringing it to our attention.
Enclosed you will find the FOIA log for 2013-2014 that you requested with all information that was entered by the responsible staff at that time. Residential addresses and contact information have been redacted to protect their privacy.
We are also working on your request for budget and spending information related to legal research. Because you specified in your request that you seek the amount spent on PACER for 2000-present and our existing system only goes back to 2010, we asked the Department of Technology and Information and the Division of Accounting to estimate a cost to retrieve the preceding years' information. Because files that far back require code to be written in order to access them and a security team must validate the data before it is put on disk, DTI estimates that it will take one day or 7.5 hours at $39.20 per hour, the hourly rate of the lowest-paid employee capable of doing the work. The total would be $294, which we would require to be paid in full before the information was retrieved. If the process takes less than 7.5 hours, the difference would be refunded to you. If you wish to amend your request for spending to 2010 to present, we can retrieve the PACER spending information at no cost. Please advise us by May 27, 2016 if you would like to amend your request.
Sincerely,
/s/ Kim Siegel
Kim Siegel, MPA
FOIA Coordinator
From: OpenGovernment (DOJ)
May 20, 2016
Mr. Jonathan Rudenberg
requests@muckrock.com<mailto:requests@muckrock.com>
Re: Spring 2015 FOIA Requests to the Delaware Department of Justice
Dear Mr. Rudenberg,
You recently requested updates regarding two requests made in spring of 2015. The FOIA deputy and staff who received these requests have since left the Department of Justice and we were not aware that they remained outstanding. We sincerely apologize for the delay and thank you for bringing it to our attention.
Enclosed you will find the FOIA log for 2013-2014 that you requested with all information that was entered by the responsible staff at that time. Residential addresses and contact information have been redacted to protect their privacy.
We are also working on your request for budget and spending information related to legal research. Because you specified in your request that you seek the amount spent on PACER for 2000-present and our existing system only goes back to 2010, we asked the Department of Technology and Information and the Division of Accounting to estimate a cost to retrieve the preceding years' information. Because files that far back require code to be written in order to access them and a security team must validate the data before it is put on disk, DTI estimates that it will take one day or 7.5 hours at $39.20 per hour, the hourly rate of the lowest-paid employee capable of doing the work. The total would be $294, which we would require to be paid in full before the information was retrieved. If the process takes less than 7.5 hours, the difference would be refunded to you. If you wish to amend your request for spending to 2010 to present, we can retrieve the PACER spending information at no cost. Please advise us by May 27, 2016 if you would like to amend your request.
Sincerely,
/s/ Kim Siegel
Kim Siegel, MPA
FOIA Coordinator
From: Jonathan Rudenberg
I'm willing to limit the request for PACER spending information to 2010 to present as proposed. Thanks for your response.
Jonathan
From: MuckRock
Hi there,
Please disregard my earlier communication. Could you please limit the fee invoice to PACER spending information to 2010 to present as proposed?
Thanks so much.
From: MuckRock.com
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 1, 2015. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Siegel, Kim (DOJ)
Hello Mr. Rudenberg,
Attached you will find the spending information and contracts with legal research services providers. I have received, but not yet had the opportunity to review for anything response, access to the emails of our Facilities Manager, who would have been the person responsible for addressing usage of these services with staff.
Kim Siegel, MPA
Legislative Affairs Manager
FOIA Coordinator
Delaware Department of Justice
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