The GAO released a report today on FOIA entitled "Processing Trends Show Importance of Improvement Plans." [PDF] From the "Highlights" page:

The improvement plans submitted by the 25 agencies mostly included goals and timetables addressing the four areas of improvement emphasized by the Executive Order: eliminating or reducing any backlog of FOIA requests; increasing reliance on dissemination of records that can be made available to the public without the need for a FOIA request, such as through posting on Web sites; improving communications with requesters about the status of their requests; and increasing public awareness of FOIA processing. Most of the plans (20 of 25) provided goals and timetables in all four areas; some agencies omitted goals in areas where they considered they were already strong. Although details of a few plans could be improved, all the plans focus on making measurable improvements and form a reasonable basis for carrying out the goals of the Executive Order.

Despite a huge DOJ documents dump to the Committee on the Judiciary concerning the US Attorney firings, it's come to light that the White House is now abstaining from using the official White House email system. Crooks and Liars has more and points out that this subverts the Presidential Records Act which mandates thorough record-keeping, and ironically, as Josh Marshall has pointed out, means that much of this "official" communication can not be shielded by executive privilege. Read on...

A posting on govdoc-l from Janet Fischer,
Collection Development/Government Documents Librarian Golden Gate University Law Library in San Francisco shows us that Congress has been tight-fisted regarding government documents for a very long time:

I'm wrapping up a fine read: Nathaniel Philbrick's "Sea of Glory," about the U.S. Exploring Expedition that sailed around the world from 1838-42, mapping
Pacific Islands, part of the antarctic coast, and the Columbia river basin and US Pacific coast, among other things. The ExEx, as it was called, brought back copious amounts of samples, specimens, artifacts, charts, journals, etc., much of which provided the basis for the foundation of the Smithsonian.

Among the problems was securing funding to publish the findings of the ExEx. Wilkes, the controversial leader of the ExEx, wrote, "I had more trouble and difficulty in securing the appropriation annually than I experienced in the command of the Expedition." Philbrick goes on to write:

"A nation that prided itself in its democratic scorn of book-learning was reluctant to acknowledge that publishing volumes about 'bugs, reptiles, etc.' was a necessary expense. When asked to vote on yet another appropriation to pay for the seemingly never-ending publications of the Exploring Expedition, one vexed senator complained, 'I am tired of all this thing called science here.' ... [There was a] growing realization in Washington that scientific pursuits such as geology, botany, anthropology, and meteorology were crucial to the progress of the nation. Almost in spite of itself, Congress began to
see the wisdom and necessity of paying for expeditions..."

Congress began to see the wisdom and necessity of paying...in spite of itself.

While we continue to be frustrated at GPO's underfunded mandate to provide copies of our government's work to the people, it does warm my heart a little to know that it has been ever thus.

One of the reasons that we at FGI continually advocate a decentralized approach to the access to and preservation of government information is because of this long history of Congress being unwilling to fully fund information efforts.

A system that depends on a centralized approach is held hostage to Congressmembers who may not always see the value of no-fee, permanent public access to fully functional government information.

Bruce Lehman, who, as the Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks under Bill Clinton, was one of the main architects of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, gave a presentation at a conference on copyright reform at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. During his talk, Lehman admitted that "our Clinton administration policies didn't work out very well" and "our attempts at copyright control have not been successful" and laid much of the blame on the recording industry for not adapting to the changing marketplace.

Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, has more on his blog including video of the Lehman's presentation.

Tom Tomorrow writes "This Modern World," a political cartoon. Check out this week's offering:

It's likely many of you are aware of CapWiz from Capital Advantage but just in case you haven't, a quick look.

CapWiz (it's available on several sites) offers a number of databases with congressional data, local political data, media info, and more. Almost all links allow you to contact a politician/reporter/etc. via email.

Three places to find the database:
1) C-SPAN

2) The Hill (a D.C. polical newspaper/web site)

3) USA Today

Key Features:
+ Weekly Free E-Mail Alerts with Voting Records of U.S. Reps
+ Selected Legislation Listed at Bottom of Page
+ Media Database (organizations, reporters, producers).
The scope is impressive and useful for addresses and phone numbers. However, I found a few cases where it could be updated in a more timely manner. One example.

Perhaps the most featured filled version of the CapWiz database comes directly from Capital Advantage at Congress.org.

Features include:
+ Weekly Congress.org Update Newsletter
+ Congress This Week Podcast
+ RSS Alerts from Various issue-based Organizations (a directory is also a available)

Hi All,

We at Free Government Information are considering launching a podcast.

We are thinking of something a little like the popular LibVibe podcast, which runs between 5 and 15 minutes and would feature news from this site and other govdoc related blogs and news sources.

As far as a publishing schedule, we're thinking about twice a month or so until we got the hang of podcasting.

But if there is no interest in a podcast, we could keep working on other stuff.

That is why we have a new poll. For the next month we'll take your input on whether we should podcast and hopefully through comments, find out what you'd like to hear.

So, please take the poll. If we get at least 50 people saying definitely or maybe, we'll go forward.

On ResourceShelf, our co-senior editor, Shirl Kennedy, has posted some thoughts and recent memos about general public access to CRS content.

Said CRS Director Daniel P. Mulholland, in a memo (PDF; 132 KB) dated 20 March 2007, “(T)o avoid inconsistencies and to increase accountability, CRS policy requires prior approval at the division level before products can be disseminated to non-congressionals.”

We also link to a blog post by Steven Aftergood at FAS.

Mary Minow of Library Law fame announced today that the transcripts from January's Section 108 Study Group roundtables have been published. Minow particapted in the session on ILL, and she shares her thoughts on her blog.

Ok, this one might be several lunchtimes, but I wanted to make sure it's out there. I attended the OCLC Symposium: “Who’s Watching YOUR Space?” at Midwinter ALA in Seattle. The symposium was an extended discussion about social networking practices and trends. It was truly fascinating

The panelists included Michael Stephens, Howard Rheingold, Danah Boyd, and Marc Smith. While they were all intriguing, if you're only going to listen to 1 of them, make it Howard's talk. Howard starts out, "I'd probably be in the penitentiary today if it weren't for librarians!" and it gets better and better!

The Webcast is 2.5 hours, but here's the 3 minute sneak peak:

New data from the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index shows that e-government websites rate 73.4 points out of 100 in customer satisfaction. Stephen Barr noted in today's "Federal Diary" column in the Washington Post, "Comparable private-sector scores were higher, ranging from 76.5 to 80."

Barr discussed the survey with Larry Freed, CEO of the website consulting company ForeSee Results. Freed said while government sites are under budgetary and legislative constraints, they should strive to make the information on their sites easier for the public to locate.

Among the agencies that received high marks in the survey were the IRS, the CDC, and two Social Security Administration websites.

What we at FGI like to call remixes, others call mashups.

How does one take a little of this, a little of that and create something new, interesting, and hopefully compelling or at least useful?

For a gentle introduction to the process, check out Darlene Fichter's SirsiDynix Institute's presentation Mashups : A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That. At roughly 50 minutes, this would fit into a lunchtime. You'll definitely want her slides as you listen. Or maybe you could watch her presentation.

Either way, check out the ProgrammableWeb and our remixes page for examples of things that can be done once you mix/mash things together!

When I was first asked to be a guest blogger on this site I asked if it would be possible to every now and then mention some of what we were up to at Ask.com. I was told, absolutely yes, go for it. Well, here it's the 20th of the month and I have shared very little about Ask.com.

So, without further adieu here are some fast facts and examples. For more about my role at Ask, I was interviewed by Search Engine Watch last week.

It's important to remember that the Ask.com of 2007 is not the same Ask Jeeves product that was around in the 1990's. Far from it. Jeeves retired :-) in 2006 and Ask.com is now an algorithmic engine (like Google, Yahoo, MSN Live, others) with some human edited features. We can save the discussion about what makes are algorithm different (ExpertRank) for another time.

1) Smart RSS
If a person enters the name of a blog or feed, the editors name (in some cases) not only do they get web results back but also a near real-time feed of headlines. Three Examples:
+ Metafilter
+ Om Malik
+ FDA Recalls

2) Query Context
If the search is pics of golden gate bridge not only are web results returned but also results from the Ask.com image database. Ask was the first major engine to offer this feature.

3) If a country name is searched Ask offers several sources for info about the country (or state) at the top of the page. Sort of a virtual ready reference shelf. In some cases, if a stat is searched for, that will also be returned on the results page. Example: Market Cap Cisco (CSCO).

or

Area of Iceland

or

Seattle, WA
Direct links to NCES database, city home page, chamber of commerce, etc.

4) This search for Ben Franklin not only offers useful results at the top of the page (a Smart Answer) but also options to narrow, expand, and see related names. These results are called Zoom, related results and are similar to what once was available on Teoma. In fact, Teoma technology powers Ask.com. Here's another example for San Francisco earthquake.* We place them on the right rail because it's a highly visible spot (where others place sponsored links).

5) Ask.com also owns Bloglines and both sites have blog/feed engines. Same database, different features. One feature people like about the Ask.com interface are the direct links (below each title) to subscribe to the feed or share the post using a variety of services, including Ask.com and Bloglines competitors.

6) Ask Maps.
Two points here.
A) Ask offers both walking and driving directions.
B) Ask offers dynamic rerouting and route recalculation.
Here's an example.

Now, drag the #1 or #2 "pin" to a new location. Watch the street name(s) change and the route recalculated on the fly. You can have up to 10 locations. You can also add location by simply selecting a spot on the map, right clicking and selecting "Add Location." Aerial imagery is also available by selecting the aerial link at the top of the map.

7) Ask.com is also helpful for the typical searcher who might want a Zip Code but only enter a city name. Example:
Zip Code Springfield. We offer a pull-down that lists all cities named Springfield along with a direct link to the USPS for all Zips in the selected city. Here's another example with disambiguation built in. This time, a search for info about man's best friend.

* Ask.com offers a near real-time feed of Earthquake data with a simple search for earthquake. Via the USGS. Clicking the link takes you to the data, mapped.

Over on our ResourceShelf.com site we've recently posted on several newspaper and book digitization projects.

Here's info (and of course, links) to a couple of them.

New today (official launch tomorrow night) is the debut of the Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers database and directory from the Library of Congress and National Endowment for the Humanities. The project (beta release) includes over 260,000 digitized newspaper pages and a nicely structured and searchable directory of newspaper info back to 1790.

Newspapers in the public domain from California, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Utah, Virginia and the District of Columbia published between 1900 and 1910 are part of the database. More content to come. You can also find information about specific newspapers back to 1690.

Next, we are happy to report that it's once again easy (no registration required) to access the FREE "special collections" from NewspaperARCHIVE.com.

These collections contain the full text and full images of thousands of digitized newspaper pages. Delivered as PDF files.

Not only keyword searchable but many collections offer browsable timelines. Btw, full text access to a large portion of the entire NewspaperARCHIVE database (over 60 million pages) remains available to K-12 schools and public libraries at NO CHARGE.

More here!

Btw, the current list of free special collections includes the following topics:

+ Abraham Lincoln
+ AIDS
+ Asbestos
+ Chocolate Wars
Content Coming Soon.
+ Earthquakes
+ FBI
+ Global Warming
+ Holocaust
+ Immigration
+ Kennedy Assassination
+ Martin Luther King, Jr.
+ Outlaw
+ Pro Baseball
+ Ronald Reagan
+ San Antonio, Texas
+ September 11
+ Space Program
+ Target America
+ Hurricanes
+ Pearl Harbor
+ Terrorism
+ Titanic
+ Tornado
+ Winter Games

The Public Relations/Technology blog For Immediate Release featured several topics of interest to librarians in issue 222:

• YouTube, Viacom and the removal of videos
• Twitter and its potential in business;
• and at 46:09 - Comment from Clarence Jones on copyright royalties and it's implications (bad) for streaming radio providers.

Twitter is yet another social media communications tool. It's not quite blogging for cell phones, but that's close. Shel and Neville explain it better than I can.

The item on YouTube regards the removal of 100K+ videos, allegedly for copyright violations. A number of videos were misidentified and EFF is collecting stories from people affected.

Maybe the above isn't new to you, but it was new to me. Hopefully it will be new to some of you as well.

Webcast: Tom Blanton, Director of National Security Archive at George Washington University chatted with Briam Lamb on C-SPAN this morning for about one hour. Direct to the Real Video.

Also, the National Security Archive has just awarded the 3rd Annual Rosemary Award for Worst FOIA Performance to the U.S. Air Force.

In the early days of the web, TerraFly.com from Florida International University was super cool.

Using TerraFly you could virtually fly over the United States using USGS imagery. This feature is still available.

Well 7 or so years have passed and the imagery, well, it's everywhere and in some cases better.

However, this free service still as one very cool and very useful feature, gobs of local data.

From Census info to local hotels to fires, it's in Terrafly.

Give it a try.

1) Go to TerraFly

2) Enter in an address or just a Zip and make sure your pop-up blocker is off.

3) Wait for a couple of two new windows to open.

4) Review imagery. Now, click on a specific point on the image.

5) A new window will open with filled with local data. If you clicked a few blocks away some of the numbers and items would be different.

Here's what a page for a specific address looks like for a spot in Chicago.

Cool!

This is the first post of what we're calling "Lunchtime listens." The idea being that there's LOTS of good audio/video out there of direct or peripheral interest to the documents community. We're going to post them to FGI to make them more easily findable and give y'all something to do during your lunch breaks (alone or in groups as a brownbag viewing session :-) ) besides staring out the window (not that there's anything *wrong* with staring out the window!). If you come across A/V that you'd like to share with FGI readers, please email us at admin AT freegovinfo DOT info.

And without further adieu, Check out the video from the 2007 code4lib conference in Athens, GA. Day one is online including keynote by Karen Schneider, Emily Lynema's talk on "free the data," breakout sessions and lightning talks. Their plan is to put video from the entire conference online. I know several people who went to Code4lib and were completely blown away by the energy, discussions, and community!

Code4lib is a "group for folks who are interested in the convergence of computers and library/information science." In other words, they're a growing community of library hackers, developers, open source advocates and fellow travelers who have an active listserv, irc channel etc for communication and support.

It's always cool to see librarians/researchers getting a bit of the spotlight.

Maria Wygand and Marion Paynter two researchers/info pros at the Charlotte Observer are publishing the, Your Right to Know blog with info about public records (what they are, where to find them, and how to use them).

Impressive work and a great idea. Btw, a link to the blog also appears in the print edition of the paper and on this web page where you can find all of the Sunshine Week articles.

A Hostile Environment for Documents, By Glenn McGee, The Scientist, (March 2007) Volume 21, Issue 3, Page 26.

You'd think that the agency responsible for, say, all clinical information on the effects of pesticides would do anything to keep those systems of information fully operational and to modernize. But in fact, the greatest environmental disaster of this decade may be the amnesia that the White House and EPA seem hell-bent on causing.

In February of 2006, the White House proposed cutting $2 million of the $2.5 million budget for EPA libraries. It is a huge cut to the libraries, but a blip against the $8 billion EPA budget. Incredibly, EPA did not wait for the budget to be approved, but instead began decimating libraries and trashing materials including at three regional libraries, a library for research on the effects and properties of chemicals, and its headquarters.

Dear FGI Readers,

I beg you to indulge me in a non-govinfo posting that I think touches on some of our issues anyway. Here is an appeal I've been making across the 'net whereever I have a venue (except govdoc-l):

------------------------
Thanks to the great business communicators/music lovers over at For Immediate Release, I've become aware of a great campaign calculated to show the collective power of podcasters and lovers of independent music.

Here's the idea from the Bum Rush the Charts blog:

Podcasting gets little respect from traditional media. To them we're little more than a joke, than amateurs. What they don't understand is that podcasting is more than just a delivery mechanism - it's a social movement. People are sick of the watered-down, cookie-cutter content that networks and record companies expect us to enjoy. People are tired of watching friends and loved ones get sued by record labels who only care about profits and nothing else, not even the artists they supposedly represent.

We want and deserve more. On March 22, 2007, we're going to change that with your help.

We can do better. We can match and exceed the reach of big media, corporate media, labels, and the entrenched interests. On March 22nd, we are going to take an indie podsafe music artist to number one on the iTunes singles charts as a demonstration of our reach to Main Street and our purchasing power to Wall Street. The track we've chosen is "Mine Again" by the band Black Lab. A band that was dropped from not just one, but two major record labels (Geffen and Sony/Epic) and in the process forced them to fight to get their own music back. We picked them because making them number one, even for just one day, will remind the RIAA record labels of what they turned their backs on - and who they ignore at their peril.

What's more, we're going to take it a step beyond that. We've signed up as an affiliate of the iTunes Music Store, and every commission made on the sale of "Mine Again" will be donated to college scholarships, partly because it's a worthy cause, but also partly because college students are among the most misunderstood and underestimated groups of people by big media. Black Lab has taken it up another notch - 50% of their earnings are going to be donated to the scholarship fund as well.

If you believe in the power of new media, on March 22nd, 2007, take 99 cents and 2 minutes of your time to join the revolution and make iTunes "Mine Again". If you're a content producer (blogger, podcaster, etc.), we're asking you to join up with us and help spread the word to your audience. Nothing would prove the power of new media more than showing corporate media that not only can we exceed their reach and match their purchasing power, but that we can also do it AND make a positive difference in the world. If we can succeed with this small example, then there's no telling what can do next.

I'm in. Are you? I'm even going to download iTunes again just so I can buy "Mine Again" on March 22, 2007. Will you join me? If you will, repost this message anywhere you can think of!

Go to Bum Rush the Charts's blog and add them as a MySpace friend.

Join the Independents! Down with Alliance Media! Learn what the heck those terms might mean!

-------------------------

What possible connection can there be between buying an indie song on March 22 and FGI's mission? Several, as I see them:

• Podcasters, like libraries, break up a media/information monopoly.
• Combined community efforts will be key to building a reliable government information system in the future, so we need practice in common effort.
• This campaign is a sign that activists of any cause don't have to passively wait for a large organization (RIAA, Congress, GPO) to "make things better." We can do things ourselves.
• Podcasting relies on Creative Commons and public domain material and most podcasters share our view of DRM!

So whether it's your cup of tea or not, and whether or not you have iTunes, I hope you'll join me in an action to force recognition of independent musicians and podcasters!

A very useful source for calendar info regarding events here in D.C. (from Congressional events, to statistical releases to think tanks issuing reports) is the Washington Daybook from Find-Inc. The Daybook is also published each morning in the Washington Times at this URL:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/daybook.htm

If you look near the top or bottom of the page, you can even have the page spoken to you using the Washington Times "Click-2-Listen" service.

Here's an example.

Links to the last 5 daybooks are found at the bottom of the page.

If you're interested in archiving each Daybook page for the long term, you might want to consider using a web clipping service like eSnips that offers 5GB of free online storage and sharing space.

Btw, on our ResourceShelf site, we've collected a number of planning calendars that might be of interest from the BBC, UN, APTV, and other sources.

Yesterday, I posted this item linking to a new investigative report from the AP about documents removed from public view since 9/11.

Here are some interactive resources and stats from the AP regarding FOIA.

1) Take the AP "Records of Concern" Interactive Quiz
Based on the AP story linked to yesterday.

2) Interactive Chart: Information Requested From Federal Agencies
1998-2005, Stats by agency and a look at slow responding agencies.

3) U.S. Government Agency FOIA Links

4) Interactive Map: State Laws on Information Access
Cumulative Sunshine Laws, 2001-2005.

According to an article in today's NYT, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez "admitted" that mistakes were made on the political firings of 8 US attorneys. Senators Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein have again called for Gonzalez to step down (see video below). It's now clear that this issue was not a low-level administrative mistake. The House Judiciary Committee has a list of documents regarding the Attorney firings. One of the most bizarre things to emerge was that former Whitehouse Counsel Harriet Miers originally wanted to fire all 93 attorneys. The AP has more (via Huffington Post).