Metadata (met-uh day-ta): Data about data. Metadata describes how and when and by whom a particular set of data was collected, and how the data is formatted. Metadata is essential for understanding information stored in data warehouses and has become increasingly important in XML-based Web applications. (www.webopedia.com)

The Arizona Supreme Court has blazed new ground today for government transparency and access to public records in a case about information that’s created as part of electronic records but often is not seen when those records are printed out.

In Lake v. the city of Phoenix, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that metadata should be treated just like the underlying document and is covered by Arizona’s open records law. This means government agencies won’t be able to withhold key details about an electronic file, such as when it was created, who had access to the record and if there’s any hidden information used by government officials that “disappears” when you click the print button.

The lawsuit is about Phoenix police officer David Lake, who claims he was wrongly demoted by the city. Among the evidence produced in the case are some personnel evaluations that reflect poorly on Lake’s performance. Lake  suspects the evaluations were written after his demotion and were falsely backdated.

Since the evaluations were written on city computers using a standard word-processing program, Lake’s lawyers demanded to see the electronic originals including the metadata that would show when the documents were first created, if they were ever changed, and who might have edited them over time. You can type any date you want at the top of a letter, and you can go back and edit that letter weeks or months later to completely change its message. But only a few computer experts can hack into word-processing programs and change the metadata to hide their tracks.

Phoenix lawyers denied Lake’s request, and argued in court that the open records law only applied to parts of a document typed in by a city official that could be printed off. Since metadata often is automatically created by the software outside of the user’s control, it can’t be considered a public record, the city also argued.

A trial judge and the Arizona Court of Appeals agreed with Phoenix’s position. That’s when several media/freedom of information groups took an interest in the case, including the First Amendment Coalition of Arizona. Full disclosure: I’m on the coalition’s board of directors.

Lake and Phoenix were arguing over several issues in different stages of their appeals, and the First Amendment Coalition worried that the fundamental, open government concern involving metadata wouldn’t receive the proper attention before the Supreme Court. So the coalition’s lawyer, Dan Barr, filed a “friend of the court” brief to explain how metadata works and why that information shouldn’t be viewed differently from other parts of a public document.

Part of that presentation came from Steve Doig, a journalism professor at Arizona State University who previously participated in Pulitzer Prize winning investigations with the Miami Herald. Doig explained in writing for the Supreme Court how there are times when you can’t even make sense of an electronic file (especially if it’s created in a spreadsheet like Excel) unless you have the corresponding metadata.

The Supreme Court agreed with the arguments from Lake and the media groups. The court even recognized that governments can avoid the time-consuming hassle of isolating and printing off metadata by simply turning over the original electronic file (usually referred as its “native format”). That’s what most people seeking public records from computers want these days anyway.

But a lot of Arizona governments refuse to release the electronic version of records, claiming state law doesn’t require them to do so. Typically, governments insist on printouts to discourage public record seekers or to limit what they will get to review.

This Supreme Court decision should provide a new incentive for governments to release complete public records in a manner consistent with 21st century technology.