Neglect Of Reporting Requirements Report of the 1999-2000 San Francisco Civil Grand Jury Preface

Municipal Code requirements sometimes are not easy to find. Report requirements are sometimes not well labeled, the indexes for the Municipal Codes are sometimes deficient, and sometimes responsibilities for reports are called out in a part of the Municipal Codes that a given agency would not expect (e.g., Police Department report requirements called out in the Traffic Code).

Some agencies send their reports directly to each of the Supervisors, rather than sending the reports to the Supervisors through the Clerk's Office.

Municipal Code Annual Report requirements are not well-defined (see Appendix A for details).

Many agencies do not appear to be following the requirements of Administrative Code 8.16.

Many people are unaware of the many report requirements in the Municipal Codes.

Many people are unaware of the requirements of Administrative Code 8.16 requirements to send copies to the Public Library.

There is no list of all reports and documents that should be available at the Public Library and that also could be used by the library staff to send out reminders or otherwise contact departments to get copies.

City Attorney overview material does not provide any information regarding Section 8.16.

There is a lack of clarity as to who within San Francisco City government should be responsible for ensuring that all government agencies are informed of all their requirements. There also is a lack of clarity as to who should monitor compliance with Municipal Code requirements, and enforce the requirements as necessary.

 Putting a document on the Internet does not meet Administrative Code requirements to send two copies to the Public Library.  Attention must be paid to keep information on a web page current, unless the agency is also maintaining an archive.  There are people that do not have ready access to the Internet yet. The Public Library does maintain availability of Internet access for the public, but sometimes it can be difficult to get all the research done in the time usually allotted (1 hour).  There must be strong document control procedures to ensure that the version placed on the Internet is the same as that issued in paper form. The issue here is that sometimes several earlier drafts or versions of a report exist, and care should be taken to ensure that the correct version is uploaded to the website. Also, following upload there should be restrictions on access so that uploaded files are not inadvertently accessed and modified.  Sometimes a report has graphs or tables that are not easily presented on the website. Also, if graphs and tables are presented, there remains the issue of access to this information by the blind since software translators may not be able to adequately translate such information.  Information should easy to find on the website. Even though the document is on the Internet, it may not be in the most easily found area. Reliance on use of the website search engine is not necessarily the best way, since this essentially presupposes that the public should know that such information is there, or should be there, to be found. If one doesn't know that the information should be available, then one very well may not use a search engine to find it.