As part of Sunshine Week, the nation’s new Freedom of Information Act ombudsman, Miriam Nisbet, took part in an exclusive interview with the Associated Press.  This question-and-answer really struck me:

Q: Why is this important to the average citizen, someone who doesn’t work for a newspaper?

A: “If people are going to know how their government is operating, what they are doing that affects them, what they are doing on behalf of the people, they have to be able to see the records that reflect that. The documents that are being created, the data that are being produced. Particularly, you look at huge government programs and all the data that come out of that. Those data belong to the people, and they should have a right to see them and then do with them what they want.”

This stuck out to me because we as public administrators often think of only the media, local newspaper, or kooky citizen as requesters of open records.  In reality, “Those data belong to the people.”