I've requested thousands from all over the United States, big and small municipalities. The responses and individuals ranged from a small contingent of extremely professional, organized, helpful, and all around wonderful people to many and more abysmal, unorganized, uneducated, tech-illiterate, and downright incompetent folks.
I can't remember how many times I'd point the person I was attempting to request the information from directly to their sample version or official space where they said they were the holders of said datas I was looking for which also provided the instructions to specifically call them to request the data. I know from my POV (as a tech worker) it may seem silly to expect anything like that from them but what I was asking for was akin to an excel spreadsheet full of information they absolutely do have and it required no legwork, no generation of new materials, no gathering of data from multiple ancient sources.
It was all material / datas each individual municipality was making money, hand over fist, every month of every year -- the sample datas most municipalities had was evidence of that. I was basically asking them for the collection of the entire data, publicly traded info, and most were convinced they didn't have it. A product of laziness is what I'd chalk it up to because the individuals and municipalities that were awesome to work with and more than helpful seemed to take pride in their work and getting said data was easier than the majority of things involving interfacing with the government at any level usually winds up being like.
I can't remember how many times I'd point the person I was attempting to request the information from directly to their sample version or official space where they said they were the holders of said datas I was looking for which also provided the instructions to specifically call them to request the data. I know from my POV (as a tech worker) it may seem silly to expect anything like that from them but what I was asking for was akin to an excel spreadsheet full of information they absolutely do have and it required no legwork, no generation of new materials, no gathering of data from multiple ancient sources.
It was all material / datas each individual municipality was making money, hand over fist, every month of every year -- the sample datas most municipalities had was evidence of that. I was basically asking them for the collection of the entire data, publicly traded info, and most were convinced they didn't have it. A product of laziness is what I'd chalk it up to because the individuals and municipalities that were awesome to work with and more than helpful seemed to take pride in their work and getting said data was easier than the majority of things involving interfacing with the government at any level usually winds up being like.