County report card · Florida
Sarasota County, Florida
County portal uses reCAPTCHA verification which deters automated access but may be bypassed by determined actors; its robots.txt also disallows automated access to 20 paths (/downloads/, /applyonline/services/DownloadPDF.ashx*, /propertysearch/parcel/details/…)
- Population
- 476,604
- Portal
- Assessor & Recorder
- Portal vendor
- Not identified
What the audit checked
Four low-cost protections every online records portal can have. How we rate counties.
- robots.txtYes — permissive
- Terms of useSilent on automation
- Bot challengereCAPTCHA
- Owner notificationAvailable
Portal audited: secure.sarasotaclerk.com/OfficialRecords.aspx, www.sc-pa.com/propertysearch, experience.arcgis.com/experience/86f63894cd9a45e2a6394df227d08e6e, www.sarasotataxcollector.com/
Doing well
- A notification system that alerts residents when their records are accessed
- Technical barriers (recaptcha) that deter casual bulk access
Room to grow
- Expanding the robots.txt file to disallow automated scrapers
- Updating the Terms of Use to prohibit automated access
What to ask for
Three low-cost steps that have worked in other counties to close gaps like this one:
1. Adding clear robots.txt rules that disallow automated scrapers
2. Updating the Terms of Use to prohibit automated access
3. Implementing a notification system that alerts residents when their records are accessed
The full playbook is What Counties Can Do.