In his letter, Mr. Weir asked the Commissioner to issue an advisory opinion regarding Mr. Weir's access to certain data that St. Louis County maintains. IPA, on behalf of the Commissioner, wrote to Julie Brunner, Administrator of St. Louis County. A summary of the facts is as follows. The Agreement does not allow one to copy, download, store, publish, etc. Rather, the Agreement allows access to the records, through the Internet system, merely for the purpose of inspection.
Access is obtainable only during regular business hours.
In his response to the Commissioner, Mr. Jones wrote that the County's management of electronically stored information is currently developed and organized to provide limited and regulated access via electronic data retrieval to certain County databases. This web page has general information on the various departments and their directories. Technically, this access is achieved through a direct electronic pathway from the public user's personal computer to the County's web page via the Internet. Public users may print data displayed on the County's web page. There is currently no data maintained on or linked to the web page which would require a public user to use a download procedure.