County report card · Minnesota
Watonwan County, Minnesota
Vendor (Schneider Geospatial) policy on automation has not been resolved
- Population
- 11,204
- Portal
- Assessor & Recorder
- Portal vendor
- Schneider Geospatial
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 challengeCloudflare bot detection
- Owner notificationUnknown
Portal audited: beacon.schneidercorp.com/Application.aspx?AppID=216&LayerID=2931&PageTypeID=2&PageID=1600, www.co.watonwan.mn.us/index.aspx?NID=195, tapestry.fidlar.com, beaconbeta.schneidercorp.com/Application.aspx?AppID=216&LayerID=2931&PageTypeID=2&PageID=1600
Doing well
- Technical barriers (cloudflare) 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 protections that residents in other counties have found valuable:
1. Adding robots.txt rules that disallow automated scrapers
2. Including a Terms of Use that prohibits automated access
3. Implementing a notification system that alerts residents when their records are accessed (per the AZ, FL, HI, IL, UT model)
The full playbook is What Counties Can Do.