Ed and Outreadch Opportunity

Good day all,

Members of the Colorado General Assembly introduced legislation recently
that would mandate school districts to publish certain financial data in a
down loadable format.  The bill is HB10-1036 and is available at
http://legislink.org/us-co?HB10-1036.  This is a good thing on the surface.
What concerns me is the fiscal impact statement associated with the
legislation.  The concerning part of the fiscal impact statement focuses on
the information being released in PDF or in an image format (e.g. JPEG,
TIFF, GIF), but does not talk about other formats.  The fiscal note is
available at http://bit.ly/80RBiu
<http://bit.ly/4rpsFY><http://bit.ly/8uT4Ly>.
As has been discussed by this group and in other places, PDF only
publication is not the best method of publishing government data.

Therefore, I saw this as a perfect opportunity for some education and
outreach.  I am planning on putting some summarized information together
that will discuss data publication methods to sent to the bill sponsors and
other members of the Colorado legislature.  I also plan on speaking at the
Senate hearing for the bill as a concerned citizen.

I would appreciate the assistance of anyone wishing to help me out.  Please
feel free to e-mail me and I will share a Google Doc I will be using to
draft the materials.

Thanks
Brian