Free Government Information (FGI)

[cross-posted from legalresearchplus.com]
by Paul

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an interesting “Information Age” article on its opinion page. L. Gordon Crovitz reports on a research project by Don Tapscott called “Government 2.0: Wikinomics, Government & Democracy.” “The goal is to use Web-based collaboration to ‘reinvent government’.” The WSJ piece reports that “[t]he federal government has launched several wikis . . . Intellipedia lets 37,000 officials at the CIA, FBI, NSA and other . . . agencies share information and even rate one enough for accuracy . . . Diplopedia lets State Department staff share information. . . . “

[cross-posted from Legalresearchplus.com]

As I wrote about earlier, I was having a fun, albeit geeky Saturday night following links hither and yon, and I ran across the fascinating PublicMarkup.org site.

PublicMarkup is a project of the Sunlight Foundation , and just like sunlight is the best of disinfectants, a bit of public scrutiny and participation should make legislation stronger and more viable. The folks at PublicMarkup drafted the Transparency in Government Act of 2008, and hope that the wonders of online collaboration will enhance and improve the legislation and will inspire lawmakers to carry it forward.

From the PublicMarkup site:
“The Sunlight Foundation has put together what we think can become model transparency legislation—the Transparency In Government Act of 2008—and we now need your help to further shape and refine it.”

Interesting? Inspired?
Well, you better move fast if you want contribute — You only have until May 19th before they close the site for comments and then try to re-craft/re-draft the legislation.
-Erika

[Cross posted on LegalResearchPlus.com]

On a daily basis I visit various court and other government websites, often to locate recent opinions, regulations, or agency decisions. It is a common practice for law librarians and for any researcher who wants very recent sources or does not have access to commercial databases. Admittedly it is far less often that I consider whether the case I just downloaded is an authentic representation of the court’s decision.

But consider these two examples. The first from the California Courts website and the second from the website for the First Circuit Court of Appeals:

“The Official Reports page is primarily intended to provide effective public access to all of California's precedential appellate decisions; it is not intended to function as an alternative to commercial computer-based services and products for comprehensive legal research.”

“Although every effort is made to ensure that the information contained on this site is correct and timely, the First Circuit does not warrant its accuracy. Portions of the information may be incorrect or not current. The information contained on this site should not be cited as legal authority.”

In 2007 the American Association of Law Librarians completed a survey of states' online statutes, regulations and case law to determine which states, if any, were deeming their online material to be official and/or authentic. The survey, “State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources,” is available from the Washington Affairs Office of AALL. Survey authors Richard Matthews and Mary Alice Baish concluded that while many states considered the primary legal material that they put online to be official, no state had taken steps to authenticate those materials.

In a world where online research is becoming the norm, are courts (and other government websites) really keeping up with the needs of the people they serve by not offering official and authenticated versions of their opinions online?

-Kate Wilko

[I found this interesting news on the wonderful blog: BeSpacific -Erika]

Press Release
(from archives.gov)

May 7, 2008

Washington, DC. . . On Tuesday, May 6, 2008, Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein submitted a report, entitled The Founders Online, to the Committees on Appropriations of the U.S. Congress. This report is the National Archives response to concerns raised by the Committees that the complete papers of America’s Founding Fathers are not available online. The Founders Online is a plan for providing online access, within a reasonable timeframe, to researchers, students and the general public. The report is available electronically at the National Archives website: http://www.archives.gov/nhprc/publications.

In announcing the completion of the report, Professor Weinstein said, “We feel this plan would provide scholars and the public access to the best available versions of the complete papers; it would also protect the longstanding interests of the publishers and host organizations which along with the Federal government have invested great resources in the past four decades. Most importantly, it would build a monument to the Founders of our nation in their own words.”

The National Archives received suggestions from the editors of the papers of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington, university publishers, and others in crafting a blueprint for providing access to the already completed print editions and the raw materials for the editions to come. If carried out, the plan ensures that interested readers worldwide can see the work in progress with the already complete editions accompanied by transcriptions of the papers yet to be published. To hasten the transition process, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission plans to invest $250,000 as a demonstration pilot project.

The plan outlines three basic steps that remain:

* Digitizing the existing 217 volumes and publishing the Papers on a single website to allow for research and inquiry across America’s Founding Era collections;

* Transcribing and otherwise preparing for publishing on the web the remaining papers (approximately 90,000 documents) and replacing these raw materials with authoritative annotated versions as these are completed; and

* Creating an independent oversight process to ensure that rigorous performance goals are established and met by the parties carrying out all aspects of the work.

Cross-posted from LegalResearchPlus.com
(written by our newest teammate, Sergio Stone. Sergio is Stanford's first Foreign, Comparative and International Law Librarian.)

U.S. international agreements on Dept. of State’s Case Act Databases

An often overlooked free source for recent U.S. treaties and other international agreements is the Department of State’s Reporting International Agreements to Congress under Case Act database.

Selected bilateral and multilateral agreements in full-text are available from 1982 through 2008. Unfortunately, the site does not include a keyword search function. The database consists of agreements submitted to Congress by the Dept. of State as required by the Case-Zablocki Act, P.L. 92-403, 86 Stat. 619, 1 U.S.C. 112b. (1972). The agreements appear on this site before they are published in the official compilations of Treaties and Other International Acts Series (T.I.A.S.) and United States Treaties and Other International Agreements (U.S.T.).

Agreements from 2006 through 2008 are available here.

Agreements from 1982 through 2006 are located at the Department of State’s FOIA site.

The sheer volume of election coverage can be daunting to follow for even the most hard-core election junkie, let alone the casual observer. A few sites do everyone the favor of breaking campaign reports and statements down to the facts, attempting to separate the truth from the truthiness.

FactCheck.org is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. It is essentially a multimedia blog that responds to the factual assertions and allusions made in politics at the federal, state, and local levels. FactCheck.org's staff elegantly analyzes candidates' statements on such issues as a potential gas price fix for factual consistency. They dutifully list their reference sources and, for contextual emphasis, they frequently provide audio and video links to the candidates' actual comments.

PolitiFact, mentioned previously on FreeGovInfo, is a service of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly Inc. PolitiFact's trademark is its Truth-O-Meter, which measures political statements on a scale of "True" to "Pants on fire." It's handy for those who want bottom-line analysis straight away. Like FactCheck.org, PolitiFact does have full articles with which it provides sources and multimedia links, although the analysis is not quite as deep. But PolitiFact does a better job of organizing and integrating its content: you can browse statements by Truth-O-Meter rating, by subject, by the person who said it, by whom it was said against, and even by where it was said (TV ad, blog post, speech, etc.).

Other interesting fact-checking sites include:

The Center for Public Integrity - A "nonprofit, nonpartisan, non-advocacy, independent journalism organization" that uses investigative journalism to examine political and campaign issues in depth. Of particular note is the Buying of the President site which looks at how money influences the presidential campaigns.

Opensecrets.org - Tracks money in politics and distills it into graphs, charts, and brief summaries. It is run by the non-partisan, non-profit Center for Responsive Politics.

The Fact Checker - A Washington Post blog that analyzes campaign statements in a similar way to FactCheck.org and PolitiFact. The difference here is that topics are prompted by user suggestions. It employs a "Pinocchio Test" similar to PolitiFact's Truth-O-Meter.

-Brian

Happy May Day (whether you observe International Workers' Day or the lesser known Loyalty Day)!!

This month we have a special treat for you: a group of law librarians from Stanford have agreed to be group bloggers-of-the-month for May, 2008. The group includes Paul Lomio, Brian Provenzale, Erika Wayne, Kate Wilko, and George Wilson -- see the Stanford Law Librarians' bios for more on what they do and where their interests lie. We're really looking forward to reading what's on the minds of these good folks.

Thanks also to Frank Lester, our BOTM for April, 2008! Below is the recap of the threads that Frank got started.

• Court Invalidates Part of Copyright Remedy Clarification Act
• HHS Appeals Ruling That Would Give Consumers More Access to Physician Medicare Claims Database
• Consumer Satisfaction with E-Government on the Downturn

Remember, if you're interested in taking a turn at the BOTM podium, please email us at admin AT freegovinfo DOT info.

Take it away Stanford Law Librarians!!

Here at Stanford, the campus recently enjoyed the excitement that is Recyclemania. (Stanford actually won the Gorilla Prize!)

In the spirit of Recyclemania, I want to share an amazing project for recycling PACER documents. The site, brought to you by Carl Malamud and the good people at Public Resource, gives everyone a chance to liberate PACER case downloads.

How do you do it? Here are the simple instructions from the site:

"Just upload all your PACER Documents to our recycling bin. Click on the recycle bin and you'll be presented with a dialogue to choose files to upload. Then, just hit the “Start Upload” button and you'll hear the sounds of progress as your documents get reinjected into the public domain.

We'll take the documents, look at them, and then put them onto bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/pacer for future distribution. This is a manual process and you won't see your documents show up right away. But, over time, we hope to accumulate a significant database of PACER Documents. "

Interested in helping, but you don't have the time to recycle documents onto the site? Well, lucky for you, the site also allows you contribute with Digital Offsets. The digital offsets are a tax-deductible donation to Public.Resource.Org which will then be utilized to purchase PACER Documents for the site.

Are you lucky enough to live near one of the 16 libraries with FREE access to PACER? Perhaps, you want to sign up to join the Thumb Drive Corps, who will go to these locations with a jump drive and download as many PACER documents as possible for the Pacer recycling site.

So, what is good for the bottle, is good for the docket....

-Erika