"Most Americans can easily find videos of water skiing squirrels on the Internet, but they’ll have less luck finding out whether their children's school buses and classrooms are safe, or if neighborhood gas stations are overcharging," said the Sunshine Week 2009 Survey of State Government Information online.
Results ranged from Texas, as the most accessible, to Mississippi, as the least accessible.
Participants across the U.S. tried to find 20 different types of public records online. The categories were: death certificates, financial disclosures, audit reports, project expenditures, department of transportation projects, bridge inspection reports, fictitious registration of business names, disciplinary actions against attorneys, disciplinary actions against medical physicians, hospital inspection reports, nursing home inspection reports, child care center inspection reports, statewide school test scores, teacher certifications, school building inspections, school bus inspections, gas pump overcharges, consumer complaints against businesses, environmental citations, and campaign finance information.
Information most frequently found online were statewide school test scores and Department of Transportation projects/contracts, online in 50 and 48 states, respectively. Close behind was campaign data, reported in 47 of the 50 states; disciplinary actions against medical physicians, 47 states; and financial audits, 44 states.
The information least likely to be found online were death certificates, found on the Web sites of only five states, and gas pump overcharge records, available online in eight. Death certificates are apparently a revenue source for many states, as they charge relatives and "legitimately" interested parties for copies of the records, or farm out the work to a third-party service such as VitalChek, the survey reported, though some states provide historical access online to death certificates before 1960.
Also infrequently posted online were schools' building inspections and/or safety ratings, which are posted by only nine states, and school bus inspection reports, which only 13 states posted online.
Sunshine Week is this week every year and is devoted to openness in government. This was the first year this online survey has been held, and the organization noted that the results were a "moving target" as states were constantly changing online access to public records.
A summary of state results is available, as is a copy of the survey, and a summary by region.