Public Records
As a public agency, the University of Northern Iowa is subject to Chapter 22 of the Code of Iowa, titled “Examination of Public Records (Open Records).”
About the Iowa Open Records Law
According to the law, “Every person shall have the right to examine and copy a public record and to publish or otherwise disseminate a public record or the information contained in a public record.” “Public records include all records, documents, tape or other information, stored or preserved in any medium.” Records classified as confidential records in Chapter 22.7 of the Code of Iowa must be kept confidential unless ordered to be released by a court.
Persons may view records in person, or they may receive copies of records. Requests for records can be made in person, by telephone, by written request, or by email. Persons are not required to provide a reason for requesting a record and they cannot be required to make their request for records in writing. Persons may be charged for the cost of supervising the examination of records. They may also be charged for locating physical records or obtaining records from an electronic database and for redacting confidential information and for providing photocopies.
As a “best practice,” the Board of Regents, State of Iowa appointed a Transparency Officer for each university and the special schools. Transparency Officers have four duties related to open records:
- Keep a central log of all public records requests.
- Maintain copies of any redacted information.
- Post to their website the public records requests received.
- Create and release a quarterly report tabulating numerically the media and public requests and dispositions.
Public Records Fee Schedule
Iowa Code allows universities and governmental bodies to charge a "reasonable fee" for expenses associated with retrieving, copying, and supervising the examination of public records. The fee assessed shall not exceed the actual cost of producing the records. As a general rule, the University of Northern Iowa requires payment of the estimated fee before proceeding with the production of records. The following criteria determines how a fee is assessed.
Standard hourly fee for gathering records is $30 subject to the following limitations:
- Requests requiring less than one hour of staff time will not incur any hourly charges.
- Requests requiring more than one hour of staff time will incur charges for all time spent in excess of one hour. Charges for partial hours are at the university's discretion.
- Staff time includes: (1) retrieval of potentially responsive documents; (2) review of documents for responsiveness, confidentiality or other information exempt from disclosure; (3) redactions; and (4) supervising the examination of records by the requestor. Staff time does not include legal consultation.
Computer Programming/Database Extraction Fee is $75/hour:
- Requests necessitating computer programming or extraction of data will be assessed a charge of $75/hour.
Miscellaneous Fees:
- Photocopies will be provided at no charge for the first 20 pages. A 25 cent per page charge will be assessed for each page in excess of 20 pages.
- Postal fees will be assessed based on actual shipping costs.
- Miscellaneous fees, including CDs or flash drives requested or required for transmission of the request, will be assessed based on actual costs.