This will be my last entry as your Blogger of the Month for March. I have learned so much about government information and I have enjoyed learning from all of you as well. Thank you for letting me, a newbie in Government Documents, be a part of all this! But this isn't a goodbye, as I'll post my musings every now and again here at FGI. I'm addicted now, so you are not going to get rid of me so easily. *wink*

Before I sign off, I want to let you know about my department's wiki page that I am working on (more will be added as the years go by, I'm sure) on "Gov Docs 2.0" Resources as well as a link to my presentation that I gave at the Louisiana Library Association. If you would like to contribute information to the Gov Docs 2.0 Resources page, let me know. I can give you a password to access just that part of the wiki. So far, the page contains mostly Web 2.0 resources but I would like to include examples of other Government Depositories using Web 2.0 technologies too. I know the GODORT wiki , the Ning Library 2.0 and Government Library 2.0 group, and here at FGI there are some pages and directories about this topic too (I'll link to them from my wiki).

If Gov Docs 2.0 interests you, be sure to attend the Docs 2.0 pre-conference at ALA Anaheim! I wish I could be there, but I'll be busy being an "Emerging Leader" that day at the EL 2008 Workshop. If I could split myself in half in order to attend both, I would!

Ok, one more shameless self promotion before I go...feel free to stop by and read my depository's blog, Gov Docs on the Bayou. I welcome all comments and discussion!

Until next time,
Rebecca Blakeley

"What used to take hours to dig up and analyze is now laid bare for you to see in seconds or minutes," so states the homepage of MAPLight.org, a new website that brings together campaign contributions and how legislators vote, creating more transparency of the connections between money and politics. This includes:

- How each legislator voted on each of the 5,000 bills in the 2003-2004 California legislative session.

- All campaign contributions made to each legislator from 2001-2004, categorized by the interest or industry of the contributor.

- Supporters and opponents of each bill, and the industries and interests those supporters and opponents represent.

- A brief description of each bill, and the subject the bill is about.

- The full text of each bill, including committee reports and amendments.

So far, MAPLight.org currently includes all 5,000 bills in the 2003-2004 California legislative session and all California campaign contributions from January 2001 through December 2004. They are seeking donations and support to extend MAPLight.org to include data for other states and U.S. Congress. This is a very promising project, so let's give them our support!

Last month we posted about OMB Watch's survey to choose 5 (and only 5) favorite questions on government openness and transparency for congressional and presidential candidates. Last week, OMBWatch released their report (PDF) of the survey. Given the way things have been going over the last 30 years -- but especially over the last 8 years of the imperial presidency! -- it's no wonder that those surveyed feel that presidents should be more accountable, the public should have increased access to administrative information from both the legislative and executive branches (especially health, safety, and environmental information), and that those within the government should have increased legal protections when they report on government wrong-doing.

I think PublicMarkup's first effort at drafting openness legislation -- the Transparency in Government Act 2008 -- jibes perfectly with this effort.

Five questions to ask the presidential candidates to gauge where the candidates fall on the openness-secrecy spectrum:

1. Manipulation of Facts: "Do you support disclosure of all communications between the White House (including the Office of Management and Budget and other executive offices) and agencies regarding administrative decision-making and information disclosure?"
2. Executive Privilege: "What do you believe are the appropriate limits of executive privilege in the disclosure of information to Congress and the public?"
3. Whistleblowers: "In order to strengthen accountability against corporate crimes, would you support pending legislation that expands whistleblower protection rights to private sector workers who report violations of any federal public health and safety laws?"
4. Presidential Records: "Do you commit to reversing Executive Order 13233 to restore public access to presidential records after twelve years?"
5. Health, Safety & Environment: "Given the importance of health and safety information, how would you ensure that the public has easy access to understandable information about the air they breathe, the water they drink, and the products they use?"

Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit organization which develops and deploys new Internet technologies to make government information more accessible to citizens (i.e., Open Congress), is launching a new site called publicmarkup.org. The website is a place to post bills, to allow citizens to comment on, suggest edits to the substance of the legislation and promote participation. The idea of PublicMarkup.org is based on Transparency in Government Act of 2008. W00t!

The site is built with Django, Python, MySQL, and Debian. Double-W00t for being built on open source!!

This project is not intended to be the ultimate technical solution to the challenge of drafting legislation online, but an experiment in online collaboration. By collecting legislation, summaries, resources and commentary in a single linkable location, PublicMarkup.org provides a simple, blog-like framework for soliciting feedback on this legislation.

The State Department's DIPNOTE blog posted a video of Under Secretary for Management Patrick F. Kennedy and State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack discussing the process for creating a passport and its new security features. For the video's transcript, go to http://video.state.gov.

The Washington Times published the concluding article on their GPO Passport story on Friday:

"When the government finally built a backup passport center to be used in case Washington became debilitated, it picked a location directly in the path of potential future disaster, the hurricane-prone Mississippi Gulf Coast, which was ravaged by Katrina just a few years ago.

...The Times examined the state of America's new e-passport program, disclosing in stories this week that the GPO outsourced production of key components for the passport to overseas facilities and has charged the State Department substantially more than it actually costs to make each passport.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday her department is investigating the pricing issues, and two congressional committees also launched investigations into the security issues raised by having the crown jewels of America's border-security system produced overseas".

More details on the State Department's investigation can be found at this article also published by The Washington Times. Also, some members of Congress are investigating the passport security issue, according to an article from The Washington Times, as well as an editorial addressing these GPO passport issues.

GPO responded to the second story in a press release dated March 27th and also responded to the third story on the secure production facility via a press release dated March 28th:

"During the investigatory process, GPO did several site analyses for different locations. GPO and the State Department determined Stennis Space Center met all the requirements and to be the most secure and cost effective location".

Bill Sleeman, chair of the ALA Government Documents Roundtable (GODORT), recently posted the minutes to the GPO / GODORT Steering Conference Call of March 12, 2008. These conference calls take place from time to time and often have news of value. The minutes can be found (may have to scroll) at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/GODORT_Chair and covered the following topics, among others:

• Request for Information for Mass Digitization Opportunities
• Status of EPA Web Harvesting
• Status of the Federal Digital System (FDSys)
• Addition of pre-1976 cataloging to the Catalog of Government Publications - in progress.
• Continued distance ed through OPAL
• Current stats on the newish Government Information Online reference service.

If I were you, I'd look over the entire set of minutes as it was all interesting. I'd like to highlight two issues, both of which cry out for the documents community to do more to support GPO in some of its efforts:

EPA Web Harvest Project

Here are the notes on this subject (full names available from minutes page):

LH & RHM: Status of EPA harvesting project: GPO worked through 300 of the documents to gather information on what it will take for GPO to provide access to harvested materials (process, workflow and staffing implications). So far: the back end automation of meta-data extraction is not ready; parameters for metadata that accompanies the files needs improvement to automate de-duping; and the rules, methods and mechanisms for harvesting need to be refined (approximately 28% of material was not in scope). Basically, it is still taking more staff time to make these available than GPO can afford. BS asked about the FGI taxonomy experiment and if GPO would be investigating the results of that effort. GPO may incorporate that information into the project as the project moves forward.

GPO's results of automated harvesting finding a lot of out of scope material and difficult automated extraction of metadata are about what I expected based on my own experience and from my reading of the literature. Whether or not GPO builds on our modest taxonomy experiment (Thanks Bill!), I think that a GPO - community/citizen collaboration will be needed to begin getting a handle on web-based agency documents. They could start simply by publishing their spidering logs and see what happens. Or perhaps they can obtain some of the $2 Billion/week currently being spent elsewhere. If GPO choose to take the mass collaboration route, I hope the documents community is in the forefront of helping them.

If you're interested in taking part in our tagging experiment, please see http://freegovinfo.info/epatagging. We will be running the project through April 18, 2008. To see what has been tagged so far, please visit http://del.icio.us/tag/epapilotproject.

OPAL Training

Here are the notes on this subject:

LC: OPAL, GPO continues to use OPAL for online training and demos. At present, technical capabilities limit presentations to slide shows, such as PowerPoint presentations. Interactive web functions will be added in the future. January call for participation in creation of tutorials netted one submission; hoping to generate interest at DLC.

The FDLP has over 1200 libraries and GPO got ONE SUBMISSION? A majority of FDLP libraries are teaching oriented academic libraries and GPO got ONE SUBMISSION?

Hello! I know I'm not the only one who has insisted that GPO provide training between conferences for those of us who don't get out much. The documents community has a great reservoir of government information expertise. We should be actively aiding GPO in their efforts to spread that expertise.

I admit that GPO's one submission wasn't from my library. I have a pretty new docs staff that's still getting up to speed. But that can't be the case everywhere. If only 10% of FDLP libraries could step up with a program, that would still be 120 programs -- twice a week for a whole year.

Just so I can at least pretend to put my money (or staff time) where my mouth is, I will spend some time next month looking at our library's gov info information strengths, our customer needs and patron interests. And then sometime during the summer I or someone else from our library will submit a program. If you run a depository, will you commit to doing the same? Not only does GPO need our help, so do our colleagues.

FGI thanks the GODORT and GPO personnel who participated, Jill Vassilakos-Long for taking the minutes and Bill for posting them to the ALA GODORT Wiki.

Here are some recent items about Network Neutrality that should, alternately, make your blood pressure rise and give you something constructive to do about it! (See also: Net Neutrality on FGI).

• Comcast Blocking: First the Internet — Now the Public February 25th, 2008 by jstearns. "Comcast — or someone who really, really likes Comcast — evidently bused in its own crowd. These seat-warmers, were paid to fill the room, a move that kept others from taking part."
• Comcast Manipulating NAACP on Net Neutrality, by: Matt Stoller, Wed Feb 27, 2008. "a flyer calling for a rally protesting the FCC under the NAACP's name, put out by a PR firm, and disavowed by the local NAACP as simply a 'draft', was going around on the same day as a net neutrality hearing that Comcast packed with a crowd they hired to prevent net neutrality advocates from attending.
• Net Neutrality's Quiet Crusader By Cecilia Kang, Washington Post, March 28, 2008; Page D01. [also available here] "A soft-spoken 30-year-old PhD candidate, Ben Scott has become an operator in multibillion-dollar battles involving corporate titans, regulators and consumers debating policies over who controls the media and the Internet."
• Software for Keeping ISPs Honest, by Peter Eckersley, March 28th, 2008. "...the general problem of ISPs doing strange things to Internet traffic without telling their customers is likely to continue in the future. EFF and many other organizations are working on software to test ISPs for unusual (mis)behavior. In this detailed post, we have a round-up of the tools that are out there right now, and others that are in development..."

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) issued a press release analyzing the March 26 EPA Report to Congress. PEER Associate Director Carol Goldberg says, “EPA is approaching the task of restoring its libraries grudgingly and appears to be trying to get by doing the bare minimum,”

• EPA to Re-Open Libraries by Fall - But They Won't Be the Same, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, March 28, 2008.

The press release says that the EPA report makes clear that:

• Re-opened libraries would be limited to “core reference materials” and unspecified “resources to meet specific local needs.” The one exception is the Kansas City–based regional library whose collection had not yet been disbursed;
• All EPA libraries will be operated under the direct control of a political appointee who will review whether requests for research materials and services “meet Network standards.” ...
• EPA is not indicating when, how or with whom it will consult in order to determine “stakeholder needs” that are supposed to guide services.

Interviews with Innovators: Online Access to Public Information: Carl Malamud, IT Conversations, March 18, 2008.

For many years Carl Malamud has been a tireless crusader for online access to U.S. public information: SEC filings, patents, Congressional video, the Smithsonian's historical photgraphy, and most recently, case law. On this edition of Interviews with Innovators, host Jon Udell asks Malamud about his strategies, accomplishments, and future plans.

This is an inspiring interview. If only there were libraries and library directors who had the simple, effective vision that Carl has!!

The Special Library Association (SLA) announced today that EPA plans to re-establish the closed libraries by September 2008.

SLA met with EPA officials today to review the agency's report to Congress on the future direction of its library network.

The report, submitted to Congress yesterday, includes a summary of the network standards developed with respect to physical space, on-site collections, staffing and services of EPA’s Regional and Headquarters libraries, as well as a plan for allocating resources from the the 1 million dollars given to them by Congress:

•Re-establish on-site libraries in Region 5, 6, and 7, and the consolidated EPA Headquarters Repository and Chemical Library in DC.
•Enable Regional EPA libraries to update their collections, facilities, and equipment to meet Network standards.
•Conduct a formal needs assessment for EPA library services to support future development.

I am glad to see that EPA took the hearing's recommendations to meet with affected stakeholders and library organization officials seriously, but I do not think they met with anyone before the report to Congress was due, as was recommended at the hearing. At least, I have not heard or read about any such meeting. Correct me if I'm wrong. Nevertheless, EPA states:

"Over the next few months, we will continue to engage affected stakeholders (including our employee unions) as we finalize our specific plans for each library. The Agency is committed to working with its employees and outside parties on its future digitization plans (based on the third party review), a customer needs assessment, and long term strategic planning efforts".

This article was published in The Washington Times yesterday: "Outsourced passport work scrutinized". Several concerns were cited, including security and profits:

"Documents and interviews with Bush administration officials said the GPO made about $100 million in profits on the production of electronic passports since 2006 and their sale to the State Department far beyond the costs.

The profits are raising questions among congressional investigators about whether the GPO is complying with laws that limit its business activities to recovering printing costs on a break-even basis".

GPO replied with their side of the story via a lengthy press release.

"The current agreed upon price between GPO and our customer (the State Department) for the production of the e-passport is $14.80 per book. That includes: materials, labor, overhead, required inventory, the secure production facility and future investments. GPO does not have any role in setting the price to the public for a passport, the State Department determines that price.

...GPO is unlike most other Federal agencies in that all GPO activities are financed through a business-like revolving fund. The revolving fund functions as GPO’s checking account with the U.S. Treasury. The fund is used to pay all of GPO’s costs and the fund is reimbursed by our agency customers when they pay GPO invoices".

Today, the Washington Times published the second part of this three-part story: "GPO profits go to bonuses and trips".

"When the government's main printing agency booked $100 million in unexpected profit it went on a spending spree: large bonuses to top managers, trips to Paris and Las Vegas, and an official photo of the boss that cost $10,000.

The bonuses, some nearly as high as $13,000, and travel are raising questions among congressional investigators and Government Printing Office officials about whether the agency is misusing its newfound wealth and whether it received the proper authority for some of the larger compensation payments from the Office of Budget and Management".

I'll be honest...my head is spinning. I'm trying to find out more information about this and understand some of these issues. What do you think about all this? I'll be sure to post a link to the third part of this story and any responses from GPO that are released. Stay tuned...

If you wish to pay your respects but cannot travel to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in D.C., can now do so from your computer. NARA and Footnote.com have released a searchable digital replica of the Memorial Wall.

The site also allows you to "leave a tribute, a story or photograph about any of the 58,256 veterans killed or missing in the Vietnam War".

Word of warning, the site claims that due to recent high traffic, you might experience slow loading pages or images. They are working to improve this.

Today is the world's first Document Freedom Day! About 200 teams from more than 60 countries worldwide are organizing local activities to raise awareness for Document Freedom and Open Standards. The site also has a pamphlet to print and distribute, as well as information on open standards, document standards, and more.

Well lookee here...a website that tracks petroleum industry campaign contributions, called Follow the Oil Money.

I did a zip code/name search, and not surprisingly, Texas and Louisiana congressmen received quite a bit of campaign funds from the oil industries and they voted for "big oil" 65-100% of the time.

And did you know that George W. Bush received $2,649,725 in oil contributions during the 2004 election campaign? John Kerry received $184,037. In 2008, Rudy Giuliani received $659,158 and Barack Obama received $163,840. The presidential races page told me so.

Their visual charts are pretty amusing. They compare them to Facebook or MySpace, "in which companies and politicians have become 'friends' by giving money".

For more information, including how they get their data, go to FAQ page.

Several student patrons are working on research papers about the Cold War era and some are focusing on the nuclear arms race and the fear of nuclear attack. It's been fascinating finding and reading materials we have in our print collection, including information published by the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) in the 1950s and the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization (OCDM) during the Kennedy administration. (For a concise history of civil defense preparedness, read "Civil Defense and Homeland Security: A Short History of National Preparedness Efforts" published by the Homeland Security National Preparedness Task Force).

The students are just as fascinated (and sometimes amused) as I am with these documents that represent an era we never knew and a fear we can't relate to. Or maybe we can relate...our generation lives in fear of terrorism "code red" rather than the red scare of communism or atom bomb attack, but it's still a fear.

Anyways, the students and I found some more civil defense documents listed in the print Monthly Catalogs (we owned some FCDA and OCDM docs, but not as many as I would've liked), but we also found some on the internet. So I thought I'd share some of these online government sources I've discovered in my hunt for all things Cold War/Civil Defense related:

* Clips of historical "test" films at the DOE agency website.

* "Mr. Civil Defense Tells About Natural Disasters!" A government document comic book!

* "In Time of Emergency: A Citizen's Handbook on Nuclear Attack, Natural Disasters" (1968).

* The "Survival Under Atomic Attack" booklet can be found in federal depositories, but here is an online transcription.

* NARA records of the OCDM.

* "Atomic Culture" article by the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission.

* Not a government source, but a virtual Civil Defense Museum website created by a Civil Defense enthusiast.

* "Civil Defense Log Dies at 67, and Some Mourn It's Passing" article at NYTimes.com.


And my favorite...Civil Defense videos!

* Internet Archive's collection of Civil Defense Films and other media/film resources on civil defense.

* Some of YouTube's collection of Civil Defense Films.

Did they really think ducking n' covering under a school desk would protect them from a nuclear attack?

Voters prefer e-voting, but tech has limits, By Grant Gross, IDG News Service, March 21, 2008. Researchers found the error rate of the worst-performing machines was 3 percent in a simple task like voting for president and, in "more complex races," the error rate was higher.

• Voting Technology The Not-So-Simple Act of Casting a Ballot, by Paul S. Herrnson, Richard G. Niemi, Michael J. Hanmer, Benjamin B. Bederson and Frederick C. Conrad, Brookings Institution Press, 2008 c. 215pp.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has announced a draft "non-exclusive agreement with The Generations Network, Inc. (TGN) to digitize and further expand public access to archival holdings in NARA's custody." The contract restricts free public access for five years.

• DRAFT PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT AVAILABLE FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
  Posted for comment: March 10, 2008
  Comments due: April 9, 2008
  Send comments to: Vision@nara.gov or by fax to 301-837-0319

The contract specifies that NARA will receive digital copies of all holdings that are digitized as part of this agreement and "[a]s with all of NARA's digitization agreements, there will be no charge for researchers at any time to access the digital copies in any of NARA's research rooms" and that users will have "the opportunity to purchase copies of the documents in digital format" [emphasis added].

As the NARA announcement notes, projects like this "will enable the public to have electronic access to textual and microfilm records sooner than NARA itself can provide." Once again, lack of funding for public accessibility ends in a two-tier access: free if you get to a reading room, fee if you want to use the Web.

The proposed agreement puts restrictions on redistribution of the digitized records by NARA for five years.

For a period of five years following the donation [TGN "donated" copy of the Digitized Materials to NARA], NARA will not sell, make available for downloading, or otherwise provide in electronic form, the entire contents of the Digitized Materials or a major file segment thereof. During this five year period NARA's use of the Digitized Materials will be limited to (i) access by staff and researchers at NARA locations; (ii) production for a fee of digital images of a microform publication or a portion of a series of original records, with a minimum complement of metadata to enable the purchaser to describe, identify, locate, retrieve, and manage the images; 2 (iii) display of sample images on NARA's website or elsewhere to promote awareness of NARA's services and activities or for noncommercial educational purposes, and (iv) to reproduce portions of the Digitized Images on offline storage devices that are not accessible via Internet such as DVDs or CD-ROMs, with metadata created by NARA only, for sale to the public at rates established by NARA. In the case of (ii) and (iv) above, license restrictions on the materials as issued by NARA will limit their use to prohibit resale, distribution or republication of the Digitized Material in any format or media by the original customer or successive owner of the media.

After five years from the date TGN donates Digitized Materials made from original records, NARA will have full and unrestricted rights to use them, including the right to sell, make available for downloading, or otherwise provide in electronic form, the entire contents of the Digitized Materials or segments of them. [emphasis added]

See also: GAO/Thomson-West Contract Raises Questions

Last year, the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB), an advisory committee established by Congress, issued a report to the President, Improving Declassification. (See also: Improving Declassification, 2008-01-13).

On March 17, 2008, the PIDB heard public comments on its report. For a report on those comments and links to many of the comments, see:

• PIDB Receives Public Comment on "Improving Declassification" Report National Coalition for History, March 19, 2008.

Among the comments were concerns that funding would ultimately be the biggest stumbling block to realizing the recommendations and that too many documents are classified in the first place, which contributes to the overload of the declassification system. Tom Blanton, Director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University suggested that the PIDB recommendations should be transformed into a draft executive order for immediate consideration by the incoming president. Mark Zaid, Executive Director of the James Madison Project encouraged the PIDB to pursue declassification of records of Congress, and classified judicial records.

Representing the American Historical Association (AHA), Dr. Brian Martin, President and Chief Operating Officer, of History Associates, Inc. noted that the value of audio, video and digital media value may increase over time and urged The National Archives (NARA) to avoid thinking that "if we have it on paper, we don't need to preserve it in another format."

Dr. Patrice McDermott, Director of Open-The-Government.Org many in the public interest community fear that electronic records, including historically significant records, are being lost or destroyed.

With regard to "sensitive but unclassified" documents, she expressed a need for a clear review process of these unlimited control markings, rather than linking them to declassification review after 25 years and treating them as "super-classified. As previous witnesses said, she agreed that much of the problem is caused by massive over-classification at the front end of the process

Library of Congress tests Web 2.0 photo archive, By Wade-Hahn Chan, FCW.com, March 24, 2008. "The Library of Congress has turned to the popular online picture-sharing community of Flickr for help with tagging the library's voluminous photo archives."

Library of Congress Photos on Flickr, Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Reading Room. "We invite you to tag and comment on the photos, and we also welcome identifying information—many of these old photos came to us with scanty descriptions!" See also the FAQ.

The Library of Congress' photos, Flickr. "Yes. We really are THE Library of Congress."

See also: EPA Pilot Project Tagging Project.

This isn't technically about government documents, but I just wanted to bring to your attention the Code4lib journal. Issue 2 has just come out and from the table of contents, I'd say there's something there for everyone.

Code4lib held one of the best conferences I've been to in a while. It was the place where the library developer community came together with the content community (for lack of a better word) to talk about and show off ways that Web technologies could enhance access to and preservation of digital collections. I was really impressed with the energy, know-how and positive attitude bubbling over at the conference. Plus, the lightning talks (where UC Berkeley's Harrison Decker talked about virtual environments for accessing govt data on CDROMs) and keynotes were top-notch.

Please check out both the Code4lib journal and the code4lib community (conference and listserv). You'll be glad you did!!

Table of contents:

• Code4Lib: More than a journal. Eric Lease Morgan
• Free and Open Source Options for Creating Database-Driven Subject Guides. Edward M. Corrado and Kathryn A. Frederick
• Using Google Calendar to Manage Library Website Hours. Andrew Darby
• Geocoding LCSH in the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Chris Freeland, Martin Kalfatovic, Jay Paige, and Marc Crozier
• Toward element-level interoperability in bibliographic metadata. Carol Jean Godby, Devon Smith and Eric Childress
• Help! A simple method for getting back-up help to the reference desk. Kenneth Furuta and Michele Potter
• Googlizing a Digital Library. Jody DeRidder
• Participatory Design of Websites with Web Design Workshops. Nancy Fried Foster, Nora Dimmock, and Alison Bersani
• Quick Lookup Laptops in the Library: Leveraging Linux with a SLAX LiveCD. Dan Scott and Kevin Beswick
• The ICAP (Interactive Course Assignment Pages) Publishing System. Margaret Mellinger and Kim Griggs
• Respect My Authority. Jonathan Gorman
• Conference Report: Code4LibCon 2008. Carol Bean, Ranti Junus, and Deborah Mouw

Senator Mary Landrieu wrote an article at poynter.org, "letting the sunshine in" to illuminate delayed FEMA response to FOIA requests in regards to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. For example, Mark Schleifstein of the New Orleans Times-Picayune filed a FOIA request with FEMA regarding its disaster response operations and planning. After two years (and asking him twice if he was "still interested"), FEMA has yet to act.

But it's this part of the article that really hits a nerve:

"Baton Rouge Advocate reported this week that it had filed a FOIA request in 2006 seeking documentation on FEMA’s contracting procedures and the decisions behind deploying travel trailers across the Gulf Coast. FEMA says they will release the information -- for a fee. The going price for the truth is apparently $209,990, principally to defray copying costs. The agency said the documents are not available electronically and that the only hard copies are stored in its New Orleans field office. Meanwhile, on its Website, FEMA itself advises that, 'If you plan ahead and copy what you have onto compact disks, you can be secure in knowing that they will not be lost in the future.' "

I just don't know what to say after reading that...

The Internet Archive has many fans here at FGI. If you're not familiar with this project, go check out the slide show at Wired magazine about the mechanics of the Internet Archive Book-Scanning project.

"While Google has made headlines over the last two years for scanning thousands of copyrighted works for its Book Search project, the Internet Archive is quietly digitizing around 1,000 public domain titles every day...the text collection on archive.org is the world's largest online collection of free books, with nearly 350,000 titles and growing."

I wrote about creating a digital government documents library with Google Books a few weeks ago, but the Internet Archive also has a plethora of digitized government publications, as pointed out to me in the comments. Since then, I've been happily "bookmarking" government documents of interest to my patrons and my depository. These bookmarked documents can be shared via a wiki subject guide or a social bookmarking tool of your choice.

However, unlike Google Books, there is no RSS feed for recently bookmarked documents, and your bookmarks are not arranged via topic or title order, but by the date you bookmarked them. Maybe these features could be suggested to them or brought up in the forum? You can also contribute or donate to the Internet Archive as well. Nevertheless, the satisfaction you get from using and marketing this non-profit, actual library should be rewarding enough!

Thanks to an alert from a dedicated but shy reader, our attention has been focused on a story on boing-boing titled Did the US gov't sell exclusive access to its legislative history to Thomson West? This story has links to documents relating to this deal requested by the redoubtable Carl Malamud. I took the time to read/skim through the contract documents and found this interesting section:

Taken from "Attachment A, Statement of Work" from the contract between Thomson West and GAO, posted at http://www.scribd.com/doc/2299358/Contract-Between-Thomson-West-and-GAO

Background: Since its inception in 1921, the US Government Accountability Office has compiled 20,597 legislative histories of most public laws from 1915-1995. These histories, spanning the 64th-104th Congresses, are currently being used onsite in the GAO headquarters Law Library in paper or microfiche format by GAO staff. On rare occasions other federal government employees are allowed onsite access to the paper or microfiche copies of these histories. Because of its historical and research value the legislative history collection shall be digitized to preserve the integrity of the files and improve the searchability of this valuable information resource.

Two years ago, GAO began a pilot project to convert a small number of GAO legislative histories from paper and microfiche formats to digital format. Since then 243 histories have been digitized using in-house resources and will be made accessible to GAO staff only through a web-based database on the GAO Intranet. The 243 histories consisting of 1,214,438 pages were randomly selected and include some of the largest histories in the collection. These histories shall also be re-scanned as part of this digitization contract.

This sounds like a major goldmine of information that really hasn't been shared with other parts of the government, let alone the public. It also sounds like GAO tried to do some of this work on its own but found it unviable. So left to itself, the information wouldn't contained in the paper files wouldn't be available to anybody. So I'm not surprised it went looking for a partner. But I am surprised and concerned that they went with a commercial partner when the GAO office is within driving distance of a number of major universities and when public-spirited organizations like the Internet Archive and Public Resource might have been happy to come up with a solution to provide this taxpayer-funded information at zero cost to the taxpayers and either zero or minimal costs to GAO. Conceivably there might have been some way for the Government Printing Office to incorporate this into GPO Access, although that certainly would have been at some cost to GAO unless Congress was willing to make an appropriation for this purpose. But any Congress that claims to be committed to strong public access should be willing.

Were alternatives to in-house digitization or wholesale privatization pursued? If not, why not?

Long time readers of FGI know that most government information is considered public domain and also subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. So what's to stop Carl, Internet Archive, or some other public minded group from exposing this rich trove of legislative histories to the public which were taxpayer funded to begin with? According to the GAO, plenty:

Taken from "Attachment A, Statement of Work" from the contract between Thomson West and GAO, posted at http://www.scribd.com/doc/2299358/Contract-Between-Thomson-West-and-GAO

FOIA Requirements: While GAO is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), GAO has regulations (4 CFR Part 81) that follow the spirit of FOIA. The paper or microfiche copies of the legislative histories (and possibly the PDF copies of the "GAO Materials" section) would be available for public inspection and copying. However, under GAO's public disclosure regulations, GAO charges a per page copy fee. Accordingly, any extensive copying would be expensive and the quality of the copies, for many of the histories would be poor.

I assume this was put into the contract to assure Thomson-West their investment would be secure from public-access zealots who have the idea that the American people should only be charged once instead of twice for government information. But the paragraph raises two important questions that I hope someone in Congress will ask GAO:

1) On what rational basis would you charge a per-page fee on the 1,214,438 pages that have already been digitized? Running a backup tape isn't the same as hand copying files. GAO should be directed to immediately release that database at zero cost unless they can carefully and believably document actual copying expenses including staff time. But a per page copy for PDF files isn't credible.

2) When GAO says "quality of the copies, for many of the histories would be poor", are they saying that the quality of copies would be poor just for the public or for Thomson-West as well? The first reading suggests a deliberate effort to sabotage no-fee public access, while the second reading suggests that Thomson-West customers will be paying a high price for lousy duplication. Neither option seems particularly fair.

I think I speak for all of us at FGI when I say that while digitization for greater access is a laudable goal, wholesale privatization without a careful, public examination of other, more citizen-friendly, alternatives is not acceptable. If you agree, please ask your Members of Congress to direct GAO to take a second look at this contract and facilitate no-fee access to this valuable set of legal materials.

In the spirit of Sunshine Week, the National Archives announced the opening of 1.3 million pages of Cold War era Central Intelligence Agency records, dating from 1947 to 1977. The documents are being released as “a part of the National Declassification Initiative program announced by the Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein in April 2006.”

I'm not sure how many of these are available as digital copies, but nevertheless, these records may help some of my student patrons with their papers on the "Red Scare" and the Cold War (every semester I have at least five students working on some aspect of this topic!).