the information retrieval system. that deals mainly with e-mail, but there could be some implications here. the main hurdle to this consolidation and a broad effort appears to be financial. as the board president chu has pointed out at meetings, the city is financially strained and there could be some hurdles in completing the effort, moving it forward. if this falls, would that be an obstacle to implementing the provision, and if it proceeds successfully, with that place any constraints on implementing the provision? i have alerted my colleagues on the task force and a number of sunshine advocacy organizations on this measure. i would urge the port of supervisors to give due weight to whatever comments they send your way.

>> thank you. i think you might have been referred to the other ordnance, that has not quite been addressed yet. i know that both were called together. if people want to speak about the current one, by all means. >> i wanted to speak in favor of this legislation and thanked supervisor mirkarimi. there are many people who say they advocate for sunshine, but supervisors certification -- mirkarimi has consistently produced legislation to enhance open government. a couple years ago, he did legislation regarding the recording of meetings at city hall. this is a continuing effort on

his part. i very much appreciate this. the one thing i would to just in future legislation, to strongly encourage departments that are craving digital documents to make them text searchable. right now, a body could issue a notice, but it would be a non text searchable .pdf, so it would not be searchable by search engines, or four people that are blind and require a screen reader. it is easy enough to get it out in a circle fashion, so i would encourage, maybe as an amendment to this, too create text searchable documents when a

document is formed digitally. supervisor campos: very good point. next speaker? >> i also support this legislation. there are a lot of reasons. it is green, cost-saving, timesaving. i want to give you a story on why i think it is important. i left out the name of the department, because it is not important, but it is an overall issue with all departments. i got information in june. they told me to call because there was a lot of printing. i asked for it in a digital

form. she said she was unable to. what i did -- on the same day that i signed the paper, sunshine was asking what permission i had to give out that information. in the same day, i got the information i needed electronically. i got the information without even opening the document. i literally in mailed it to six other people i worked with. we discussed, you did not need to print it out, just look through it. it saved the city time. it saved the city money not having to print days. i have a little more experience in getting information the way i want it, but there are a lot of

people who do not have these skills, and they may have been discouraged. it is important. this is going to save the city money. i just want to commend you for the work you are doing. it is an honor to speak to you all. supervisor campos: next speaker. is there anyone from the public that would like to comment on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. >> think it to the public. i certainly did not need to confuse anybody by taking the other item first. we should open for public comment again once we get to that point, but i think the information has been out there. let's help change say practices and expectations. the citizenry wants us to be efficient with our dollars and sensitive to the impact of those dollars, how it affects purse strings, and the

environment. that is exactly what this ordinance intends to do with regard to our paper usage. supervisor campos: thank you. supervisor mar? supervisor mar: thank you to the task force and everyone else here representing. i would also ask that my name be added to the legislation. i think school districts should also be looking at this as a major reform. so think it to you, supervisors, and to the activists here. supervisor campos: if we could also have a motion to adopt the amendment. >> so moved. supervisor campos: we will move this forward as an item committee report. it is really amazing how you keep coming up with these great ideas, that when you look at them, you wonder why we have not done that. i want to thank you for continuing to push the city in

the right direction on these issues. supervisor mar? supervisor mar: i was just going to ask supervisor mirkarimi to address the issue of cost. my understanding is, the savings of less wasted paper may outweigh the cost of providing documents electress -- electronically. is there a cost benefit analysis? >> it is anecdotal, but i do not think anyone in city purchasing that we spoke to -- they can speak to this, if they want to. but based on our ability to reorient habits of people who demand copies of -- whether it is planning to appeal hearings, redevelopment project hearings -- we have 10 binders. that can somehow be augmented by the fact that they might be satisfied with an electronic version of that, over a period

of time, to know what documents are to be distributed. then i think we will see a conceit -- significant cost savings. that is what i have been told. i would be happy to follow up with more specifics to prove that. supervisor campos: i think that makes sense that there would be some cost savings. if we could take that motion without objection. if we could call item six. >> item 6. ordinance amending chapter 2 of the san francisco administrative code by adding article xii, sections 2.96 through 2.100, to define "published" as required by san francisco chartearticle xvii. >> i want to speak to my motivation for putting this out. i have been inspired by the conduct and experience of working with our city departments, rec and parks,

planning, among others that helped fuel my desire to delve into the need of how we can improve the instruments of outreach and notification to the citizenry of san francisco. as anyone of us, as district supervisors to entertain an encounter frustrated citizens who feel a lack of access, who feel excluded or ill-informed, even after they have made the attempt to gain more information by the city, it still can be very vexing for the public, even for a very fourth thinking city, like san francisco, who is very much involved in the information age. yet, our practices of notification are obsolete. they are founded, grounded over

the last 40 years but have not involved in the way that we need them to. toward the objective of trying to empower the citizenry, so they do not have to resort to going to a newspaper, but it is the only official requirement, outside a posting outside of the board of supervisors, there really are not many requirements that obligates the city and city departments to inform the citizenry in the way that we would like. so the net result is mostly our offices, our staff and in turns trying to make sense of fielding complaints, or try to turn around a frustrated citizen who feels like, why is it so hard to get this information? this might seem small in the

scheme of things, but when you tally the complaints we hear -- and i did not just mean one district. this is citywide. they want that kind of relationship with city departments. i know city departments want the same thing. so in order to move us in that direction, this ordinance reorients our notification process. the way that we receive information has changed. city codes have fallen way behind the times. the city has greatly expanded its use of internet provided information. individuals access to that has also expanded, but the city has not kept up. when it comes to official notices, the city depends on a model where it is printed in the back of the newspaper. and it is not even clear where those notices should be

coordinated or situated. so it becomes a hunt for many people to find them. this ordinance will simplify and streamline the process for publishing public notices, and it will streamline the public's ability to find these notices on the city's website. in 2009, prop k, which moved us through a budget process -- prop a, which moved us through a budget process -- the definitions of notifying never happened. have to do that. this defines published as posting on the city's website, posting on the a corporate department website, in the library, which is only done by ad hoc practiced now, and there is no uniform practice city- wide. notice it would not need to be published in the newspaper unless specifically required by city charters, however, i have

an amendment that reinforces the position if it has to be published in the newspaper, we encourage you to do so, especially in communities. the department of technology will place on the home page a link for all official notices, so instead of seeing chief executive news, maybe we can see some department information on the front page. this official notices link will include links -- sorry, tom and cheek. official notices for all city departments. individual departments will also be required to have a prominent official notices link on their respective home page. this also directs the clerk of the board to work with the clerk of technology and librarian to implement these policies. what this does not do is mix changes to requirements under the brown act or sunshine act, makes no changes in newspaper

publishing specifically required by state, federal, or local law. in closing, the public needs to hunt each department's separate web site to find their notices, if there are even notices to begin with. publishing with newspapers have become an archaic and expensive process, and we should reevaluate where is not legally required. this ordinance will make the city's library one of the centralized repository for information, and both the department of technology and library are confident they can provide the service. there are a few amendments and i would like to submit. one is on page two, line 17. we would insert after section 2.98, provided that the department will cause a summary to be published in the "official newspaper" is set forth in the administrative code chapter to article 9.

a summer show contain enough information to have a person of average intelligence to determine whether he or she needs to review the information and materials more fully on the web site homepage. in other words, i do not want to eliminate -- some were concerned it would happen -- the strategy and path of publishing newspapers. i still think we should have that and expand our repertoire by moving into an internet policy, in addition to. that is what this amendment does. the second thing is, on cleanup, based on feedback from the department of technology, that they are responsible for maintaining the "official notices section on the home page" while individuals are responsible for maintaining the individual pages on their website. section 2.98, page 2 line 24, 25.

colleagues, that is our ordinance before you. i want to thank my staff, the community of advocates who have really urned to do what we can foresee notification promises -- processes, and helping us to synthesize the best way we might want to advance the expectations of us, to make sure the public is poorly informed or providing greater access to the actions we undertake. i want to thank the city attorney's office as well. actually, if i could call the deputy city attorney, just to do this in public. just some cleanup language.

supervisor campos: we would ask the madam deputy city attorney to come up. >> it supervisors. -- supervisors. there was one small change. at request of the department of technology, page 3, starting on line one, city departments shall -- and then there is a silly transmit notice to the department technology for posting on the city's official web site home page. that is replaced with -- the department shall post notices on and notices pages accessible from the department's web site home page. the department of technology shall call such notices -- again, a deletion -- to be promptly posted on receipt. the department technology shall cause such notices to be acceptable in the notice section

placed on the city's home page. supervisor campos: thank you. >> i do not know if there is anything, since you helped us compose this -- you would like to speak with regard to what current practice has been, first as the need to upgrade our practice about how we inform the public? i know you have been following sunshine, brown, notification for some years now. >> yes, i did work in the clerk's office on this. it does give people access on the website but gives newspapers. regardless of the meeting that an individual uses for information, there will be a link or follow up with a can get the information they need. >> old habits die hard in some

cases. in one respect, if people rely on their community newspaper, it is something that we do not want to eliminate, but at the same time, we want to expand people's options for where they can gain information. >> that is right. the clerk's office did a survey, they published questions asking people if they saw this notice and to give feedback. one person responded and said, please have bigger type. particularly this amendment that you just read, it gives people both options. they will have a short summary, an agenda-like freezing of a particular notice, but then

we've refer people to the specific website so that they can see the full notice. >> thank you for your assistance. colleagues, if it is ok, i would like to call up the clerk of the board. i want to thank the clerk's office, who is on the front lines of having to facilitate and address many of these issues that i think we take for granted in some ways. in order to keep people informed of the over 60 commissions and task forces and advisory groups, not to mention, any of the organs related to the chief executive, board of supervisors, any of the other elected family in san francisco, it gets into the many dozens of activities and bodies that are engaged in some form of city business, formally or informally. that puts an incredible amount

of onus on the clerk and others to traffic cop, for lack of a better phrase, that information to everyone else. if it is not done well, naturally, the fallout is, why are we not informed? >> thank you. we have been working in conjunction with supervisor mirkarimi and the city's attorney's office. this does not preclude any of the notification that are required under state and federal laws, which are land-use matters which include general plan amendment, zone controls, eminent domain, ground controls, items that will still be required under state and federal law. what this does eliminate is the need for us to publish all of our agenda, summary of actions of minutes, as well as it legislation introduced. i have a shamble -- i have a

sample to show you what this would look like. honestly, i do not see how anybody can read anything in those tiny columns. >> what would that cost us, for example? >> probably $1,200 for that ad. >> aggregate lee, over a budgets time? >> some years are more than others. about $150,000 a year in publications. the passage of this ordinance, we could save -- conservative estimate is 50% of that. we do not know the requirements that we have to publish. as the deputy city attorney

indicated, at the bottom of these ads, we had been indicating, if you see this, let us know. we have not received any -- except for the one individual who said, please make the print larger. we have included this in all the publications, so -- supervisor campos: thank you. >> thank you as well. next, i would like to call the department of technology. >> good morning, the supervisors. i would like to direct your attention -- we have been working with your staff to put together a template of what it could look like and how the

experience could be, as it relates to the general public's who accesses sfgov.org. as you see on the bottom, we have a carousel of images, city services that we have. we have public notices featured on the right. that is sort of the image that we use when we have something new, news timely. of course, these are the most requested, things that people are always looking for, accessing 311, paying your parking tickets, public notices we can highlight their as well. once you click on public notices, this is the index page but we would provide to the public. in this case, it is done by a

business service. we can work with the clerk of the board and supervisors office to determine that, but this is what you would see. every city department available from this page. finally, this is an example of where you would go from there. as supervisor mirkarimi indicated earlier, the various departments are responsible for posting the notices. commack as they are for all the information and contact -- content available on the website. we will provide the access. if there is any training that needs to be done -- which there should not be -- because these are the same tools that we are using to post these notices as well. i have a marker from the

department of technology here as well. he is responsible for enterprise in the city. he is here to answer any questions that you might have. >> thank you. i do not want to be remiss. are there any other departments that would like to speak to this? colleagues, i would be more than happy to welcome public comment for this item. >> a good morning. again, richard nee. the question i had before, on how might this city's ability to implement this provision be affected by the dt and coit obligations to upgrade the storage system, that question

was referring to both of the warden says. supervisor mirkarimi perhaps said it was not necessarily a concern in the previous ordinance discussed. and perhaps he has better expertise on this than i do. again, this ordinance is, i think, well crafted, raises no red flags with me. it is important to note, even before his days as a supervisor, mr. mirkarimi has made major contributions to the cause of sunshine in san francisco. we owe him our gratitude for that. i also want to echo her -- her -- echo -- earlier, you were talking about ms. wong. i have always found her demeanor

to be professional. >> thank you. >> good morning, supervisors. i am the eyes president of the haight-ashbury neighborhood council. we polled our neighborhood members and brought it to the board, and there was overwhelming support. anyone tried to be involved in government politics, policy knows what a nightmare it is. quite often, certain departments will have a vested interest in making sure certain groups and do not know what is going on. this should have been implemented years ago. our organization overwhelmingly supports this. we cannot wait to have this happen. >> next speaker please.

>> good morning, supervisors. director of the neighborhood parks council. i am happy to represent the council today in support of this measure. as a community-based organization, we encourage the city to continue improve public access to city notices, especially in a way that inform the number of constituents. like other community-based organizations, we rely on sharing information through our constituents through the web, and communicating to others where they can access this information. our constituent part users, advocates, stakeholders often look to us and other neighborhood groups to find this information. we like to act as a conduit for the city to make sure that more groups are finding out what is happening. knowing where to connect our users will be absolutely inaudible