Suffolk County delays rollout of new data system because of Freedom

Long Island Business News, Jul 1, 2005 by Ken Schachter

Suffolk County has put on hold its rollout of what officials call a first-in-the-nation online system for property records amid fears that outsiders could use the state Freedom of Information Law to pry open the underlying software code.

Suffolk County Clerk Ed Romaine said lawyers at Garden City- based Jaspan Schlesinger Hoffman LLP had been retained to file patents that would safeguard the county's total investment in the system, which he estimated at $3 million to $6 million over about a decade.

The system, originally scheduled for release July 1, would allow subscribers ranging from real-estate agents and developers to banks and heating-oil suppliers to go online and get a comprehensive view of a property, including mortgages, foreclosures, deeds, judgments, liens, court actions and pending actions, in one downloadable file.

Subscribers also could be notified of changes in a property's status through push messages sent via pager, e-mail or mobile-phone text message.

For example, a subscriber could choose to be notified of all foreclosures in a particular ZIP code, Romaine said.

The current system is absolutely antiquated by comparison, Romaine said. There's no other system like this in the United States. It's a push technology like you'd find on eBay. It's going to knock people's socks off.

Peter Schlussler, director of information technology for the Suffolk County clerk's office, said he expects subscribers to add $500,000 to $1 million to the county's coffers in the first 12 months of service and more in the future.

I feel this is an untapped resource that the private sector is salivating for, he said. Government is the last untapped silo to leverage this information out.

Schlussler likened the reports to the detailed accounts prepared by credit-rating agency TRW. After spending almost four years creating the system, Schlussler said that he is certain no other U.S. municipality offers anything approaching the property reports, though some offer limited data online.

The reports will be available at http://www.co.suffolk.ny.us/ scco/web/, where the county has been offering its more limited menu of online property data.

Subscription fees will be about $30 per day, about $500 per month and about $6,000 per year, Schlussler said. The files can be downloaded to the Excel spreadsheet program and further manipulated by the user. Printouts from the clerk's office will cost 65 cents per page.

Data-mining companies compile, format and sell public information based on the records found in the offices of municipal clerks nationwide.

In some instances, however, the companies have filed Freedom of Information requests with the county to provide them with complete sets of records, a request municipalities may deem onerous. In one recent case, San Diego-based data-mining firm Data Tree LLC is appealing a lawsuit it lost against Suffolk in state Supreme Court.

Suffolk County Attorney Christine Malafi said Data Tree had submitted FOI requests on a truckload of data, including mechanics liens, satisfactions of mechanics liens, federal tax liens and satisfactions, uniform commercial code filings and terminations, mortgages, deeds, map abstracts and certificates of abandonment.

They wanted everything so nobody ever would have had to go to the county clerk's office, she said. It was our position that the records are public records and you don't have to produce them in a FOIL request - [Data Tree] can just come and get them.

Data Tree officials did not respond to a request for comment in time for deadline.

Efforts to gain access to public data could include the software used to cobble together the property system, Romaine said.

We were cautioned legally that [the computer code] might be subject to the Freedom of Information Law, Romaine said. That's why we're patenting some of the program logic and source code to prevent their use for commercial purposes.

He said that no date had been set to replace the system's July 1 kickoff.

Documents involving real-estate transactions worth about $40 billion per year are recorded by the Suffolk County clerk, Schlussler said.

The online system contains mortgages and deeds back to 2000 and Romaine said his office is seeking to catalogue data back to 1969.