Mississippi Today asked for data on job listings for six months. The center replied that it would take 200 hours to complete the request. The center sent a cost estimate of $27.750, $138.75 an hour — and declined to discuss Friday’s request. Michael Morisy CEO of MuckRock (a freedom-of-information non-profit) stated that “Dropping an estimate like that without providing context isn’t a helpful way forward.” “That’s a ridiculous estimate.” Mississippi Works is the state’s workforce initiative. It is supported by a job search engine that is managed by the Mississippi Department of Employment Security. This is the state’s unemployment agency. In 2014, the agencies launched the mobile app. The unemployment office paid NSPARC (a quasi-governmental agency) over $17 million in 2014. The state’s more than 40,000 job openings has been used by leaders to promote economic development and job growth. “In the past Mississippi had many people seeking jobs. Governor Phil Bryant tweeted in 2018. “We have more than 40k jobs available today.” Phil Bryant tweeted this in 2018. In 2018, Phil Bryant tweeted. Mississippi Today interviewed two Dollar General employees and discovered that Dollar General accounts for 12 percent of all the approximately 15,500 job listings on the search engine. Other 10 percent were for positions at Domino’s, Pizza Hut, and McDonald’s. According to the department, each job posting could have multiple openings. The department added to each job posting the number of open positions after Mississippi Today’s analysis. A search on the jobs site showed that more than 550 farmhand positions outside of Mississippi were found. This is more than 11% of all jobs. These job postings date back to 2008. Mississippi Today also requested raw data from the state’s job search engine on May 6. This included the job titles, company names, identification numbers, education requirements, salary and the number of available jobs. Mississippi Today estimates that the request contains approximately 200,000 pieces. The Microsoft Excel spreadsheet can store more than 17,000,000 pieces of data. Mississippi Today has also received larger data sets from other public agencies. Mississippi Today reached out to NSPARC as well as the department of Employment Security to find out what type of computer program they used to store the jobs data. Nearly all of these programs can export raw data or “data dump”, but neither replied. Morisy stated that it is likely that the data was exported in the past. He stated that being able to pull and back up data is essential for maintaining data sets. According to the Mississippi Public Records Act, “a public entity shall provide a copy the record in the format requested” (Steven Grice, NSPARC director, who earns $152,880), the center developed a method to respond to Mississippi Today’s public records request. It includes seven steps: “Review request Feasibility; Formulate plan; Extract Information / Pull Data; Format and Review Pulled Info, Submit Pulled information to Agency for Joint review, Final Review and Validation, and Deliver Final Information To Agency.” Morisy stated that although the cost estimate is similar to what one might find in a government contract they are not being asked to perform any special tasks or do new work. “This is them being requested to comply with law.” NSPARC Communication Manager Laura McPhail earns $93,704 and has not responded to multiple emailed questions or interview requests from Mississippi Today. McPhail instructed Mississippi Today to reach Sid Salter, spokesperson for Mississippi State University, via email Friday. “He is out of the country up to the second week of June.” Dianne Bell, Director of Communications at Mississippi Department of Employment Security, did not respond to Friday’s questions regarding the software and how much the agency spent to develop the tool. The Italian government recently appointed Mimmo Parisi (NSPARC’s former director), to head the country’s public unemployment agency. Although Parisi, a sociology professor at Mississippi State University, took unpaid leave in March, and the school says he has no “official university duties” while abroad, his name is still on NSPARC materials. These materials were taken from the April 25th meeting of the council._x000D