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" , A Study of GIS fo, the Colorado Department of Natural Resources October 9. 1992 In the Tax Data decision, the Colorado Court of Appeals concluded that,.....the basic purpose of the Open Records Act is to insure the public's access to information which is the matter of public record, in a form which is reasonably accessible and which does not alter the contents of the information," (italics theirs). The court then referred to a Rorida case, Seil!le v. Bany. 422 So.2d 63 (Fla.App. 1982), for the concept that information in a computer is analogous to information recorded in code. Since the computer is the decoder of this information, the, office's supplying of printouts from the computer was the equivalent to allowing visual inspection of hardcopy records. The court also stated that it is the custodian, not the requestor, who is authorized to make regulations governing the right to inspect public records. Further, the court held that Tax Data's challenge to the validity of the treasurer charging fees for providing copies of the record to be without merit Tax Data had based this argument on the lack of an express statutory provision requiring custodians to charge fees. Based on the legislative history, the court noted that the omission of such language was intentional and that the General Assembly had anticipated custodians might establish rules and regulations regarding access, including nominal fees. -.n .-. . . .... The new clause in CRS 24-72-205(3) allows an element of flexibility to agencies met with requests which they are not required to comply with under Sar~ent or Tax Data. It allows an agency to respond to these "creation" requests by stating the agency is not required to release the requested information because of the form in which the record is kept, but is willing to create the infoI'!11lltion in such, a form that will be releasable if the requester is ' , willing to bear the cost of the effort of creation. ' In the context of computerized databases, where data manipulation is much easier than with the hardcopy records involved in Sare:ent, as was the case in Tax Data, the effect of this new legislation is to open up the potential policy decisions to offer information products and services through a user fee program. The statute lacks detail as to calculation of fees for cost recovery, and acceptable "fee setting" methodology remains subject to future court tests. The other cost recovery clause, however, makes the case of computer databases even more clear. ,This clause states that if a public record is a computer printout other than word processing output, then the state or the agency involved may charge a fee for the copying of that record, which may be up to the incremental cost of providing the electronic products or services, plus some reasonable portion of the cost of building and maintaining the information system. CRS 24-72-205(4). This extends the rationale in the Sarl!ent case above, to those situations where the information requested is kept in digital form instead of on hard copy. Since the incremental cost of the creation of the "new" record, which was involved in this case, would have been nominal if the information had been stored in a digital database, an agency which has gone through the cost of digitizing its records could be forced to become a low cost information bureau as a result of its expensive efforts. This clause, however, allows an agency that has digitized its records to recover some, or all, of the cost of this effort if a commercial market is established and keeps the agency (and the taxpayers) from being exploited because of its newly created efficiency. '" 431.7 PlanG'aphics, Inc. 6