CITY INFORMATION MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE
Regular MeetingMilwaukee, WI · June 14, 2018
Minutes
200 E. Wells Street
City of Milwaukee Milwaukee, Wisconsin
53202
Meeting Minutes
CITY INFORMATION MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE
Thursday, June 14, 2018 10:00 AM Room 303, City Hall
1. Call to order.
Meeting called to order at 10:04 a.m.
2. Roll call.
Present 11 - Kovac, Olson, Burki, Islo, Klajbor, Sawa, Meyer, Pfaff, Pinger, Watt,
Wilichowski
Richard Pfaff present as a member in place of Jim Owczarski.
Individuals also present:
Bradley Houston, City Records Center
Peter Block, Assistant City Attorney
3. Review and approval of the previous meeting minutes from March 15, 2018.
Member Klajbor moved approval of the meeting minutes from March 15, 2018. There
was no objection.
4. Records retention.
a. Proposed department record schedules for approval
Mr. Houston gave an overview. There are 32 total schedules from seven departments
that are either created new or are being amended. Four of the 32 presented are global
schedules. There are 164 schedules to close from 9 departments, mostly due to the
new fiscal accounting global schedule. The Mayor’s Office photo file series is the first
all-digital archival series to be scheduled. The Common Council - City Clerk
schedules relate to aldermanic records, is intended to replace schedule no. 77-0113
relative to sending all aldermanic records and correspondence to the City Records
Center (CRC) for archiving, and clarifies long term value of records. 4 series were
changed to global schedules. The calendar schedule directs for the calendar of an
elected official who has ended his/her tenure to be submitted to CRC for review. The
subject files serve as a catch-all series for archival material that otherwise would not
be scheduled. The general transitory files are intended to allow departments to deal
with records that have little to no administrative value and would be subject to the most
change from the State Records Board (SRB). The changes are not known, and the
hope is for the SRB to produce more definitional clarify for those records.
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Chair Kovac inquired about aldermanic postcards.
Mr. Houston replied. The retention period of postcards is at a minimum of two years.
Alderpersons have the discretion to determine relevant postcards to keep as records.
Alderpersons can retain records that have value to them, especially those with tracking
or historical value, for longer than two years as necessary at their discretion.
Member Klajbor moved approval of the proposed department record schedules, as
submitted. There was no objection.
b. State Records Board approval of previous schedules
Mr. Houston gave an update. 44 previous schedules were submitted. 43 schedules
were approved as submitted. One schedule for central drafting records relative to the
trigger event for a homicide drawing required a minor correction to eliminate the
language “declared closed case”. The official recommendations from SRB are
forthcoming, and departments will be notified once the official notice is received.
Departments have been instructed to use the schedules.
c. Document Services Section records management activities
Mr. Houston gave an overview of 2017 activities of the City Records Center (CRC).
There were 495 schedules from 23 departments or divisions and 117 schedules
submitted to the State Records Board. Of interest to the committee are special
initiatives and projects. The RMS replacement is an internal records space
management tracking database. ITMD has a stop-gap solution while an RFP is
underway to seek a commercial system.
The RMS schedule table currently lists 5,784 records schedules, of which an
estimated 5,023 are obsolete or have no expiration date. A few departments, such as
the Police Dept. and Dept. of Public Works (DPW), have the most schedules at 1124
and 799 schedules respectfully. The Police Dept. high volume is attributed to its
segmented schedule keeping within its divisions or units, and CRC is looking at
opportunities to consolidate schedules and produce general schedules. The high
volume of DPW is also attributed to its segmented infrastructure as well as from
duplicate schedules stemming from frequent name changes of units or divisions.
There is conversation with DPW to eliminate those excess schedules.
On the fiscal/accounting global schedule, a global payroll record schedule is under
development. Many departmental payroll records are convenience copies, and a focus
is to delineate official record holders of payroll records. There will be conversation with
several departments towards producing a first draft of the global schedule for review by
the committee by the end of the year.
d. Records and Information Management (RIM) Policy
Mr. Houston gave an update. The policy draft was sent to department heads and
records board members for their feedback since the last committee meeting. No
major changes were requested to the policy. One requested change was to make
explicit the records that are open to archival research, and efforts are underway to
compile a list of effective series. Department heads will be consulted prior to opening
up new records for archival research. Procedures are under review by the City Clerk in
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response to the recommendation from the public records audit to formally delineate
procedures for public records requests. The procedures include redacting records in
the CRC, which will be done only for uniform record forms and with the permission of
departments. Pretext information will be referred to departments to assist. Under
development is the screening of records for municipal research center use. Restrictive
folders will likely be physically removed and replaced with redacted proxies.
Departmental assistance will be needed to identify restrictive records. References to
the Legislative Reference Bureau will be changed to Municipal Research Library, which
will become its new name.
Atty. Block commented. State law does not allow for and does not give direction on
designating someone outside of an office to make custodial determinations of that
office. Page 3 of the draft policy should be changed to reflect archival access
purposes instead of public records access purposes.
Member Klajbor moved approval of the RIM policy with changes from the City
Attorney’s Office as stated. There was no objection.
Mr. Watt commented. Any policy affecting any City employees has to go through a
meet and confer process, including this policy. The policy may potentially have to
come back to the committee for review of additional changes.
Ald. Kovac said that the committee can review the policy again should any additional
changes need to be made.
5. Communication from the City Comptroller relating to the audit of Public Records Requests
and Controls.
Individuals appearing:
Adam Figon, Comptroller’s Office Internal Audit
Kimberly Prescott, Comptroller’s Office Internal Audit
Mr. Figon commented. The audit was presented at the May 2, 2018 Finance and
Personnel Committee meeting. The audit generated three enterprise-wide
recommendations.
Ms. Prescott gave an overview on the audit recommendations, which apply to all
departments and divisions.
The first recommendation is to develop, maintain, and display a notice regarding a
department’s Public Records Policy within its office to ensure compliance with the
requirements set forth by the Wisconsin public records law. The policy should be
updated as needed and include a description of the organization, the established times
and places at which the public may obtain information, the costs for obtaining records,
the identity of the legal custodian(s), the methods for accessing or obtaining copies of
records, and other information as described in the audit.
The second recommendation is to develop and implement formal, comprehensive, and
documented procedures for public records requests processes. The procedures
should be based on best practices and include a process to log and retain written
records requests, monitor open records requests to ensure a timely response, identify
and collect responsive records, perform a balancing-test to determine right of access,
formally respond to written record requests, determine the required format and content
of a denial or partial denial of a records request, provide notice to a record subject, and
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perform redaction as necessary. The procedures should be readily accessible and
updated as necessary. Institutional knowledge regarding procedures for public records
requests should be passed down as retirements happen. The procedures should
include instructions for employees to retain records as required by law.
The third recommendation is to enhance retention controls over public records request
documentation. Management should ensure that all relevant staff is familiar with both
departmental and citywide retention schedules for public records requests and
responses by posting copies of the departmental retention schedules to the
department shared drive, providing periodic records retention training, and designation
a departmental records retention coordinator to ensure that the department has the
most up-to-date citywide records retention schedule. Within each department, copies
of retention schedules should be stored in a location which is easily accessible, and in
a manner consistent with the citywide retention requirements. A public records request
and a response to the records request are also records and should be retained for a
minimum of three years.
Atty. Block commented. Public record requests should have specificity, and records
must be produced in a reasonable time. For broader requests, records may require
more time to be produced.
Chair Kovac said that the media may utilize public records requests to spy on each
other’s public records requests.
Ms. Prescott added comments. Atty. Block will be holding a new course on complying
with Wisconsin’s public records law, which will be helpful for departments to take
advantage of.
Mr. Houston commented. His office intends to offer citywide records retention training
once the remodel of the office is finished. Schedule 07-0001 is the schedule for
retaining public records requests and responses.
Vice-chair Olson said that she did see correspondence directing all departments to
follow the enterprise audit recommendations.
6. Review of Email Use Policy.
Vice-chair Olson commented. The policy was presented to the Finance and Personnel
Committee and was held at the request of the Dept. of Employee Relations (DER) to
do a meet-and-confer process on the policy, which has been done with DER. Changes
were few and include defining the term “city business”. There were some questions
about HIPAA and other aspects of using the email system that did not apply to the
policy.
Member Klajbor moved approval of the email use policy with the changes as
submitted. There was no objection.
7. Review of Mobile Device Management Policy.
Vice-chair Olson commented. This policy went through a meet-and-confer process
with DER and produced more changes to the policy. The name of the policy was
changed from mobile acceptable use policy. The main changes were clarifying who is
included in the policy and cabinet departments versus elected departments. Public
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safety and elected officials’ departments that maintain their own vendor contracts are
excluded in the policy but should consider including some of the rules of the policy into
their departmental work rules. Policy numbers were reordered.
Member Klajbor said that the spelling of “City Treasure” is misspelt and an “r” should
be added at the end.
Member Islo said that despite the Municipal Court being an elected officials’ office, it
should be included in the policy due to not maintaining its own vendor contracts.
Member Klajbor moved approval of the mobile device management policy with the
changes as submitted along with correcting the spelling of “City Treasurer” and the
inclusion of the Municipal Court in the policy. There was no objection.
8. Milwaukee Open Data Portal Presentation.
Individual appearing:
Alicia Fugate, Information and Technology Management Division
Vice-chair Olson said that Ms. Fugate was acquired as a management trainee to
develop the portal.
Ms. Fugate gave a demonstration of the Milwaukee open data portal at
https://data.milwaukee.gov/ relative to user experience of the portal’s features of home,
datasets, organizations, groups, about, help, search, login, register, and contact.
The home page is the landing page. It will soon have news, compatibility information,
and other relevant links. The page contains the sections of showcase datasets (those
datasets that are important to the City), group datasets (according to city
services-related topics), popular datasets, and new and recent datasets. The page
has a search engine bar and information on open data policy. All pages will have a
home button to take users back to the landing page. City links are at the bottom of
the home page. Showcase datasets appear in dashboard form with interactive charts,
graphs, and graphics that are linkable to their raw data.
Login, register, and contact options are at the upper right hand corner of the home
page. Login is not required for downloading and browsing datasets. Users can register
and login, which allows them to follow datasets, receive dataset updates, report
dataset errors, and receive an APIP. The contact options enables user to
communicate questions, comments, and concerns to ITMD.
The datasets page lists every dataset that is currently available on the portal, which is
at 64. Datasets can be filtered and searched by organization, groups, tag words,
format, and licenses. Departments that have participated in submitting datasets to the
portal are listed under the organization page. The groups page lists organizational
groups with datasets. The about page gives some information about the City and lists
the open data policy.
Chair Kovac inquired about access to COMPASS, availability of filters, mapping
capability, privacy concerns, and tracking app development.
Ms. Fugate replied. The portal does not link to the COMPASS site. The portal has
limited filters and mapping capabilities that operate differently from COMPASS.
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COMPASS enables users to insert specific information and manipulate filters to
produce specific data. The portal produces mass information or a variety of records on
a particular input of information and lack extensive filters for manipulation.
Member Meyer-Stearns said the open portal is more for people to download data and
for self-manipulation of data.
Ald. Kovac commented. Users should eventually be able to manipulate the open
portal as much as possible to produce the desired records or data that they want.
Crime data and mapping will be used the most.
Vice-chair Olson commented. The long term goal is to replace COMPASS and
incorporate COMPASS filter features to the open portal. COMPASS can search within
a radius but the open portal cannot. There has yet to be a move to produce greater
detailed datasets for the police department than what COMPASS already has.
Ms. Fugate proceeded with the demonstration. Clicking on a dataset takes a user to
data results in tabular form under the data table and data explorer tabs. There is a
data dictionary that details descriptions for each column and header. A user is also
able to share the data via social media. Some of the datasets are able to be mapped
if longitude and latitude information is available under the data explorer tab. Fire
incidents dataset is an example. Mapping is available for other types of datasets like
streetcar stops, streetcar route, and City parcel polygons. Bubble points or markers
on a map indicate a location of the dataset, and a user can click on the bubble
marker for a pop up window with additional information. Cluster marking is also
possible. The map feature allows for zooming in and some filtered results. Currently
police department datasets are not as substantial as fire department datasets.
Mr. Houston inquired about the source and retention of historical data on the open
portal.
Member Wilichowski commented. Concerning privacy, fire department datasets
separate data to produce generalized records. Exact addresses are not specified for
specific medical calls. A particular address listed in a dataset has generic EMS run
information but no information regarding specific medical issue or treatment. The
open data portal has saved time by eliminating public records requests and allowing
third parties to obtain records themselves from the portal. Some data, like CAD data,
are kept past their retention period for historical purposes.
Ms. Fugate said that historical data on the open portal come from submitting
departments and would be retained as long as required. The portal is not limited with
respect to storage space and would contain as much data as possible. Much of the
datasets submitted to the open portal were cleaned up and are not original raw data.
Ms. Fugate continued. The help page will be useful to users who are unfamiliar with
using the open portal. There are instructional videos available. She can be contacted
directly or through the contact feature to respond to and assist users in using the
portal. Google analytics can possibly be used to track app developments.
Vice-chair Olson made concluding remarks. The open portal is still under
development and will change continuously. New datasets will continuously be acquired.
Attempt has been made to incorporate every data found on existing City webpages.
The mission is to acquire new data such as parking citations. API data has been what
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many people have been looking for that was not available previously. Apps can
possibly be developed to reflect updated information, without the need to redownload
data, as the open portal is updated. The showcase datasets try to tell a story or give
an analysis of certain data. The portal is available under a soft launch. There will be a
press release once the portal is officially launched. Portal information can be included
into aldermanic newsletters.
9. Agenda items for the next meeting.
Forward agenda items to staff, the vice-chair, or chair.
10. Next meeting date and time.
a. Thursday, September 20, 2018 at 10 a.m.
11. Adjournment.
Meeting adjourned at 11:14 a.m.
Chris Lee, Staff Assistant
Council Records Section
City Clerk's Office
Materials for this meeting can be found within the following file:
180252 Communication relating to the matters to be considered by the City
Information Management Committee at its June 14, 2018 meeting.
Sponsors: THE CHAIR
City of Milwaukee Page 7
Agenda
200 E. Wells Street
City of Milwaukee Milwaukee, Wisconsin
53202
Meeting Agenda
CITY INFORMATION MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE
ALD. NIK KOVAC, CHAIR
Nancy Olson, Vice-Chair
Chuck Burki, Jane Islo, James Klajbor, Jennifer Meyer, James
Owczarski, Judy Pinger, Aycha Sawa, Richard Watt, and
Deborah Wilichowski
Staff Assistant, Chris Lee, 286-2232, Fax:286-3456,
clee@milwaukee.gov
Thursday, June 14, 2018 10:00 AM Room 303, City Hall
Amended 6/7/18 - Items 6 and 7 added.
1. Call to order.
2. Roll call.
3. Review and approval of the previous meeting minutes from March 15, 2018.
4. Records retention.
a. Proposed department record schedules for approval
b. State Records Board approval of previous schedules
c. Document Services Section records management activities
d. Records and Information Management (RIM) Policy
5. Communication from the City Comptroller relating to the audit of Public Records Requests
and Controls.
6. Review of Email Use Policy.
7. Review of Mobile Device Management Policy.
8. Milwaukee Open Data Portal Presentation.
9. Agenda items for the next meeting.
10. Next meeting date and time.
a. Thursday, September 20, 2018 at 10 a.m.
11. Adjournment.
City of Milwaukee Page 1 Printed on 6/7/2018
CITY INFORMATION MANAGEMENT Meeting Agenda June 14, 2018
COMMITTEE
Materials for this meeting can be found within the following file:
180252 Communication relating to the matters to be considered by the City
Information Management Committee at its June 14, 2018 meeting.
Sponsors: THE CHAIR
In the event that Common Council members who are not members of this committee attend this meeting, this
meeting may also simultaneously constitute a meeting of the Common Council or any of the following
committees: Community and Economic Development, Finance and Personnel, Judiciary and Legislation,
Licenses, Public Safety, Public Works, Zoning, Neighborhoods & Development, and/or Steering and Rules.
Whether a simultaneous meeting is occurring depends on whether the presence of one or more of the Common
Council member results in a quorum of the Common Council or any of the above committees, and, if there is a
quorum of another committee, whether any agenda items listed above involve matters within that committee’s
realm of authority. In the event that a simultaneous meeting is occurring, no action other than information
gathering will be taken at the simultaneous meeting.
Upon reasonable notice, efforts will be made to accommodate the needs of persons with disabilities through
sign language interpreters or auxiliary aids. For additional information or to request this service, contact the
City Clerk's Office ADA Coordinator at 286-2998, (FAX)286-3456, (TDD)286-2025 or by writing to the
Coordinator at Room 205, City Hall, 200 E. Wells Street, Milwaukee, WI 53202.
Limited parking for persons attending meetings in City Hall is available at reduced rates (5 hour limit) at the
Milwaukee Center on the southwest corner of East Kilbourn and North Water Street. Parking tickets must be
validated in the first floor Information Booth in City Hall.
Persons engaged in lobbying as defined in s. 305-43-4 of the Milwaukee Code of Ordinances are required to
register with the City Clerk's Office License Division. Registered lobbyists appearing before a Common
Council committee are required to identify themselves as such. More information is available at
http://city.milwaukee.gov/Lobbying.
City of Milwaukee Page 2 Printed on 6/7/2018
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