PIERRE -- South Dakota Attorney General Larry Long has set out on the long and winding road to more open government in what's probably the nation's most secretive state.

Long recently announced he had reconvened a special 40-member task force to analyze a report completed by his office in July. That report identified numerous discrepancies in the way government defines "public records" and identifies which are open to view.

South Dakota's Government Openness Task Force (GOTF) began analyzing Long's report last week with a view to developing effective legislation on making SD government more open. Long formed the group in 2001 to make changes to the state's public meetings laws, which passed the legislature in 2002.

At last Wednesday's opening meeting in Pierre, Long told the GOTF that South Dakota's records laws have "been put together in a piecemeal fashion," the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported. The GOTF appears split on how far to go in making records public, the paper added.

South Dakota has plenty of ground to recover on open government, critics point out. The state has no Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and ranks "embarrassingly far behind the next-to-last placers in surveys ranking states for open government," notes HogHouseBlog.

Long, a Republican, is hoping for consensus amongst GOTF members. He particularly wants agreement on the key issues of defining "open" and "closed" records, setting standards for agency discretion and settling security and privacy concerns.

The GOTF consists of representatives from state and local government, business and the media. It will next meet in Sioux Falls on Sept. 6.