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Frequently Asked Questions
What is in the Report Database?
Reports, recommendations, and orders from public cases in the APA Division of the Office of Administrative Hearings.
Does the Report Database contain every public report ever issued by an ALJ?
No. Prior to 1993, case documents were not maintained in electronic format. Current reports are often assessed for utility in research to determine if the report is to be retained in the Database.
I see public reports from before 1993. How did they get there?
An archival project was undertaken to preserve older reports prior to converting them to microfilm. Reports identified with precedential value were scanned and converted to text files by optical character recognition. The resulting documents were batch-converted to HTML for use in the Report Database.
When I specify date fields in my search, I get no hits. Why is that?
The date fields look for the date that the file was created, not the date the report was issued. Since the documents were batch-converted to HTML, they mostly have common creation dates.
So why offer the date search function?
As the Report Database is updated, the newer files will have dates closer to the date of issue. The function will then be useful to narrow the results obtained.
What about nonpublic reports?
Under the Data Practices Act, reports containing not public information cannot be released.
Are the public reports in the Database the official copy of each document?
No. The official copy is retained in the official record of each case, maintained by the agency for which the ALJ report was made. Since the Database is comprised of documents that cannot be certified (including scanned and OCRed copies) the Database cannot be used as the source of official documents. Certified copies of reports, where available, can be obtained by contacting OAH.