{"id":4679,"date":"2009-06-23T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-23T06:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/06\/previewing-an-improved-campaign-reporting-web-site\/"},"modified":"2009-06-23T00:01:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-23T06:01:00","slug":"previewing-an-improved-campaign-reporting-web-site","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/06\/previewing-an-improved-campaign-reporting-web-site\/","title":{"rendered":"Previewing an improved campaign reporting Web site"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On Friday, I was directed by a source to an unpublicized but publicly accessible page on the Secretary of State\u2019s Web site<\/a>. What I found was an under-construction version of the long-delayed project to improve the Web site\u2019s campaign reporting and disclosure databases.<\/p>\n

Eager for the site to be unveiled to the public (I listed it last week<\/a> among five ethics reforms New Mexico needs), I greedily perused the site.<\/p>\n

I was impressed.<\/p>\n

Campaign finance reports, lobbyist reports and public officials\u2019 disclosure reports were easily accessible through a searchable database that brought up basic information on the Web page and links to PDF files for those who wanted more detail. I found the new site to be simple and user-friendly — a huge improvement over the cumbersome site the secretary of state currently offers the public.<\/p>\n

But by Sunday morning the site was no longer online. It was replaced with an error message. I don\u2019t remember what it said on Sunday, but today it says this<\/a>: \u201cService Temporarily Unavailable, The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Monday, I asked the office of Secretary of State Mary Herrera<\/a> what happened. State Elections Director A.J. Salazar, who is in charge of the project, said the site was taken down because the office is currently going through a security assessment of its entire Web site.<\/p>\n

He said the department of information technology is requiring such an assessment, which hasn\u2019t been done in the secretary of state\u2019s office in recent memory. With candidates and others being able to input information about their campaign activity into the site\u2019s database, he said the assessment is important to make sure the data can\u2019t be manipulated.<\/p>\n

As for the site, he said what I saw is something that\u2019s still in the development phase and not yet ready for testing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you\u2019re seeing is just basically a snapshot of what we hope to have,\u201d Salazar said, adding that it\u2019s \u201creally not complete.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he hopes the new site is ready for testing sometime this summer and, when it is, he will invite me and other members of the media to try it out. And he said he hopes it\u2019s ready to \u201cgo live\u201d later this summer, or, at least, \u201ccertainly before\u201d the next candidate reporting deadline in October.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll believe that when it happens. But after seeing the site, I have a bit more optimism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Friday, I was directed by a source to an unpublicized but publicly accessible page on the Secretary of State\u2019s Web site. What I found was an under-construction version of the long-delayed project to improve the Web site\u2019s campaign reporting and disclosure databases. Eager for the site to be unveiled to the public (I listed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}