the space between black and white

So I recently requested data from a report that was commissioned by FHWA. The back and forth between us (myself and the contractors who did the report for FHWA) is interesting. It felt a bit surreal sometimes…

Here is my email request (the pdf of the report is available on the web):

I am trying to find the spreadsheets for the tables contained in this report:
   […removed title to keep the process as the focus of this blog]

I was told one of you might be able to help me? I would like to be able show some of the information in a design class I teach, but would rather not have to re-type it all in a spreadsheet.

Here is the next email that came (very quickly so everyone was trying to be responsive):

[Name]–
This data belongs to FHWA.
Please advise on release and proper attribution.

Note that the FHWA contact was cc’d and was being asked to advise on the request. The FHWA contact person wrote a short email that basically said give the spreadsheets to her, which was then followed by an email directing me to an FHWA site where I could download the data. The consultant also included the word file of the report. I was a little perplexed why they didn’t just direct me to the FHWA site right away, so I sent this email back:

Hi – Thanks to everyone. I will download the data shortly.
In the meantime, I have a question. The webpage where the data can be downloaded has an FHWA header, yet this page was not immediately made available when I asked about the data.
Could I get some clarification as to why I am directed to FHWA public site but needed to have FHWA’s permission to download? I would like to make these data available to students, but wish clarification [on] this point before doing do.

This generated the following back to me,

Deb-

My impression is that you requested the raw compendium spreadsheets from us to save your effort.

We did not research alternative ways to obtain it, and apparently, you had been unable to find or download the data from the public sites/links.

We simply requested and received permission to provide our base work papers to you, since our work was performed for FHWA.

Huh? So I sent this email, asking for clarification of their email,

[Name],
… I asked for the same data presented in the tables in the report in a spreadsheet format (nothing additional). I couldn’t imagine that someone would actually type in all those numbers versus cut and paste from a spreadsheet.
The email with the weblink directs me to an FHWA page with that spreadsheet data. I don’t see any difference between the data I was directed and the "raw" data that are in the tables in word file that Mark sent to me.
I just want to clarify what is exactly is publicly available versus not. I’m probably missing something, but I don’t understand what FHWA was giving permission for? Or why it even was asked for?

which generated this response,

Because we are a contractor to FHWA, and our firm’s policy for any client is …not to distribute any client’s materials unless the distribution is specifically concurred in by client.

We did not respond to you with questions about where, how, or why you had searched for the info — we simply took necessary steps to arrange to get what we have to you.

Well now, that clarifies things: it was easier to ask FHWA if they could provide me with a public website address than to just give me the public website address themselves. Glad we got that cleared up.