District 113A: Confidential Documents Made Public on BoardDocs Dated Back to 2008

Update, July 24

Ari Ioannides, president of Emerald Data Solutions, said the publication of confidential documents to District 113A's BoardDocs site was likely caused by human error.

"Our report (to the district) indicated that the files were stored in a way that's inconsistent with training," Ioannides said.

Last week, District 113A Superintendent Susan Birkenmaier said she was working with BoardDocs to determine how a number of confidential documents—some of which dated back to 2008—became accessible to the public.

The site was shut down Thursday as District 113A investigated the source of the error. Since then, BoardDocs has modified the code for the district's website to prevent the files from coming up in the search engine.

"We also offered to help them move the files so they are no longer accessible to anyone but the board and administration," Ioannides said.

As of Monday, no further information was available on how the confidential documents came to be published.

According to Ioannides, the incident is "extremely rare."

"BoardDocs hosts more than 70,000 documents for 650 organizations, and this rarely happens," he said.

Ioannides said any further investigation into the matter is being handled by District 113A.

Original Post, July 20

The number of confidential documents made visible to the public through the  website earlier this week is "much greater than originally thought," according to Superintendent Susan Birkenmaier.

On Thursday, District 113A officials learned that private documents dating back to October 2008 were visible on BoardDocs, the district's web-based document management system.

The discovery came just three days after the district learned that the minutes from 10 closed session meetings from July 2011 through January 2012 were posted online for an unknown amount of time between Sunday and Monday.

The documents were up for discussion Tuesday night as part of the board's semi-annual review of closed session minutes, but were not meant to be released to the public, Birkenmaier said.

"We did learn Thursday that the number of documents visible on BoardDocs was much greater than originally thought," she said. "We're not sure what caused this to happen, but we know the documents went back nearly four years."

Birkenmaier said District 113A immediately restricted access to BoardDocs after learning of the mistake. The page that previously hosted District 113A documents now requires a username and password.

As part of its internal investigation, the district has been in contact with Emerald Data Solutions, the company behind BoardDocs.

"At this point, we're still not sure what happened, but we are working with BoardDocs as we narrow the scope of our investigation," Birkenmaier told Patch on Thursday.

District 113A has used BoardDocs for the past several years to post board meeting agendas and related documents—including past minutes, financial statements, PowerPoint presentations and Freedom of Information Act requests. The site also had a section for district policies.

According to Birkenmaier, BoardDocs has different levels of access that determines what documents are available to view and download. Board members and administrators are able to sign in with a username and password to view confidential items, such as closed session documents and minutes, she said.

"The minutes that were accidentally made public were up for review, so they would have been posted as supplemental documents for Tuesday's closed session," Birkenmaier said.

Following a brief closed session Tuesday night, District 113A board members voted 4-1 not to release the 10 closed session minutes to the public, which Board President Dave Molitor said "has been standard practice for the board in the past."

Board Member Al Malley cast the dissenting vote. Board members Mike Aurelio and Karen Siston were absent.

On Wednesday, Malley said there were certain documents he thought should be released to the public.

"It is my opinion that some of the discussion contained in the minutes is obsolete at this point," Malley said. "I felt that it would be appropriate to release some of that to the public."

According to the Open Meetings Act, public bodies are required to review closed meeting minutes no less than semi-annually. During those meetings, the public body must determine whether a "need for confidentiality still exists as to all or part of those minutes," or if "the minutes or portions thereof no longer require confidential treatment and are available for public consumption."

As of Thursday, the investigation was primarily focused on what caused the minutes to be made public, not the content of the documents, Birkenmaier said.

"This is obviously a very serious matter, but we are taking the proper steps to deal with it and make sure it doesn't happen again," she said.

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