§ 147.083.Notice on Year 2000 Project Office Website

The administrative provision behind the notice presumption, and a period piece.

Subsection (a): a person providing information to the website is responsible for the accuracy of the person’s information posted there. The state hosted; it did not vouch.

Subsection (b) is a jurisdictional protection: a person is not subject to the jurisdiction of Texas courts solely on the basis of having provided information for posting.

Without it, an out-of-state manufacturer complying with a Texas notice scheme would have been supplying a plaintiff with a jurisdictional argument.

Subsection (c) immunises the state broadly for damages arising from its Year 2000 activities — operating the website, reliance on the accuracy of information on it, and operating the toll-free number.

The middle limb matters most. A person who relied on a posting that turned out to be wrong has no claim against the state for that reliance, which follows from subsection (a) putting accuracy on the poster.

Subsection (e) required a toll-free telephone number for people unable to access the internet — which in 1999 was most people, and which is why the notice presumption could not rest on the website alone.

Subsection (f) exempted the necessary contracts from ordinary state procurement, and provided that private vendors have no greater liability to third parties than the state would have had if it had provided the services directly.

That last point is the one general lesson here: outsourcing a governmental function did not enlarge anyone’s exposure.