History, she suffers

[Dwight Hines]

History and Rule 1B-26.003, Florida Administrative Code
St. Augustine, Florida
June 19, 2007
Dwight Hines

History is a terrible argument to use to convince someone that they
should support your position or action.  But, it's much preferred to
arguments that call on statistics.  In the measures that don't exist
of what are the most boring courses people took in high school, and in
college, history and statistics are likely to be ranked below a broken
prophylactic or a botched root canal in joyfulness.

Yet, I'm going to give history a go because:

 1) Sam Morison was an historian. He wrote fascinating books.  He was
honest at a time when that caused stress because there was a war going
on and he was writing about how well the United States Navy was doing.
 He included their mistakes in his history.   He helped the Navy learn
and they respected him for that and even paid him and promoted him.
Now, if the Navy respects current history and sees the value of
applying history immediately, that means other individuals and
organizations might also benefit from history, distant and not so
distant.   We might even hope that some people will see the value of
history for the future;

 2) I'm currently living in St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest city in
the United States and there is a lot of history here.  St. Augustine
also has a lot of missing history, most of it, according to Barzun,
boring.  Yet, the unboring parts, like murders and massacres, are
often within a boring context, context that often appears unimportant
until something exciting happens.  Boring does not mean unimportant.
St.  Augustine has a fine history library that holds some of what
written records were created and preserved in its long history.  At
the time I'm writing this, there are no computer archives in the
history library of St. Augustine's history.   All the minutia that are
kept on modern life, from how much you paid for water, how often
people were arrested and what for, and how much you paid in traffic
tickets, and so on, are not available for historians to study;

3) Future historians, not ignoring what Barzun and Morison have
written, will make good use of traditional historical techniques and
the knowledge mining methods made possible by electronic information
systems;

4)  Future historians, not ignoring what archaeologists have been
telling us for a long time, without us hearing it very well, will know
that life is not simple for humans. What directly effects health,
productivity, justice and progress are tied together in small ways,
but not simple or obvious or meaningless ways. Tied together,
connected and interconnected, in multiple ways that are not easy to
understand — even when we have the most accurate and complete
information possible;

5) Electronic databases, with information collected by governments
much like the information that used to be stored on baked mud tablets,
smooth rocks, wood bark, dried animal skins, and then paper, are a
huge improvement because the databases today allow for information to
be examined in multiple ways, from multiple perspectives — looking at
some parts while holding other parts constant.  It is no wonder that
many governments are threatened by people — who are not under their
control — examining what the government does, because some folks in
many governments are afraid of accountability;








6) Florida has a specific law, Chapter 119, Florida Statutes, (2006)
soon to be (2007) that details how the state and county and city
governments, including regional governments, must provide any one who
asks, an opportunity to review and examine public documents, and, if
desired, have copies made of those documents to take with them.   The
public records law is based on the Florida Constitutional right of
citizens to know what their governments are doing.   It is a wonderful
law and if you have been to countries that are oppressive, not
representative governments, then you realize what a miracle open
government is;

7) The development of computers and the development of electronic
databases meant that specific rules were written to insure that all
Florida governments would be able to provide computer based
information to anyone who asked.  Thus, the computer, with all its
mysteries, would not be a barrier to open government.  The Rule
1B-26.003, F.A.C., Rules of Electronic Record Management for Florida
and its governments are wonderful;

8) Rule 1B-26.003, F.A.C., should be required reading for every
historian, every sociologist, every economist, every business manager,
and every political scientist, as well as all those who just want to
be informed about their government;

9) St. Augustine, Florida, has no system to transfer their present
databases to the history library, and the City is presently in
violation of much of Rule 1B, including the section that requires that
they have a list of all the inputs and outputs of their computer
software;

10)  Each year, for the past five years, the City Manager has
certified, in writing, that the City is in compliance with Rule
1B-26.003, F.A.C. to the Florida Department of State.   One minor
reason for the certification is to be certain that all the files that
the City destroys during the past year were not important, not
required to be saved — something that's impossible to know if Rule
1B-26.003, F.A.C., is not obeyed;

11)  Governor Charlie Crist and the Florida Legislature passed
legislation this month to reduce taxes.  All the city and county
governments are complaining about how much the tax cuts are going to
hurt the governments in providing services;

12)  The City Attorney will not allow his discussions on the refusals
of the city to provide electronic records to be videotaped;

13) The County public schools have stated that "character education
must be based on trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness,
caring and citizenship."  They may be on to something but what they
are claiming,  the local governments are not exclusively practicing.
What is astounding is how resilient the system is to dishonesty.   I
think the substantial cost savings will not come from technical
changes that increase efficiency, but from ethical leadership that
sets goals of excellence with character.

I have to end this historical note because I have to write interview
questions about the City databases and I have to write the answers to
my questions because I don't think there is anyone in the City who is
capable of answering the questions or anyone who is willing to answer
the questions.  I don't know if this technique will be called
surrogate video interviewing, or in absentia video interviewing.

I think History suffers.  Most people know what bullies, be they
Saddam or Fidel, do to History.  And you just know, if History were a
man, she would not be treated this way.  So she suffers.


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