Every so often, there’ll be a discussion within city government about what’s an internal or external matter.
The more important question is whether internal means confidential. It seldom does.
Three quick observations:
Generally, public employees, engaged in public tasks, at public expense, are doing work that should be open to residents’ review. A government that sustains itself on the earnings of others has the slightest claim to separation, concealment, or secrecy from its own residents. For this reason, internal matters that are private matters are few and far between.
Second, there is almost never an internal matter that involves direct interaction between working public employees and residents — those are external matters. Whatever one may say about internal matters, it’s nearly impossible to have contacts between public employees (while working as public employees) and residents that are not, by definition, external. Government employees cannot directly engage in conversations, meetings, encounters, calls, etc. with residents or visitors and credibly claim those conversations as internal, let alone private.
I’m sure they’d sometimes like to do so; it’s just that liking’s not enough to make it so.
(The rare exception: closed or executive sessions of public meetings, as permitted under the law. That closed sessions of public meetings are narrowly-tailored under Wisconsin law confirms the view that most encounters aren’t closed and private.)
Third, even when conduct directly involves only public employees, and so is internal by definition, that’s nonetheless typically a public matter. A public official couldn’t, for example, be the subject of a sexual harassment claim from a subordinate and contend that the claim against him was private (although it would have been internal).
(Sheboygan’s former mayor, for example, was a defandant in a sexual harassment claim from the Sheboygan director of human resources – that wasn’t a private matter, although the misconduct alleged was ‘internal’ between them.)
‘Internal or external’ doesn’t change the fundamental principle that a public thing should be available for the public’s review.