The Sunlight Foundation announced today a new bill introduced by Congressman Steve Israel (NY-2) called the Public online Information Act (POIA) (read the bill (PDF)). POIA will require that all "public" executive branch documents be permanently available on the Internet at no cost. POIA also creates a:

"special federal advisory committee to coordinate the development of Internet disclosure policies. These policies promote information best practices, including data interoperability standards, and will keep the government up-to-date with new technology. The advisory committee’s 19 members – six appointed by each branch of government, plus one by GSA – are drawn from the public and private sectors and serve as watchdogs, synthesizing the needs of agencies and the public and making recommendations on updating federal law."

While I wholeheartedly support the spirit of POIA -- free permanent internet access to executive branch documents! -- and will definitely be contacting my representative to support its passage, I have 2 concerns that I hope will be discussed by the Sunlight community, the soon-to-be federal advisory committee, libraries and the public:

1) preservation: There was an article in today's NY Times -- "Fending Off Digital Decay, Bit by Bit" -- that highlights the many issues surrounding digital preservation. Just putting something on the Web does not mean that it will be preserved. The GPO has been working on their Federal Digital System (FDsys) since 2004 (and really since 1994 when they started GPOaccess) to deal with the inherent digital issues. Many researchers, librarians, academics, computer programmers etc have been working on these issues pretty much since the 1960s. And the issues are still here today.

So I'd like to see as part of this bill an acknowledgement that online information is expensive to preserve AND that there will be continued funding for research and sustainability of digital archives through the National Digital Information Infrastructure & Preservation Program (NDIIPP). Readers are encouraged to explore the issues here and here.

2) privatization of govt information: The following from the Sunlight announcement caught my eye and concerned me:

Freeing government information from its paper silos provides the private sector with raw material to develop new products and services and gives the public what they need to participate in government as active and informed citizens.

Federal government information is in the public domain. That's a good thing. However, there's a fundamental issue at stake here. One can't have "permanent free public access" to government information where the private sector is involved. The private sector has been involved in giving access to government information for a long time (see LexisNexis, Thomson West, Readex etc). They do it well but they certainly don't do it for free. Libraries and other organizations have paid many millions of dollars to license access to govt information for the communities they serve. Here's more background and context on privatization. For all intents and purposes, these private sector companies take public domain information and privatize it. Any digital govt information accessible on the internet should already be findable, usable and accessible in bulk at minimum.

But there needs to be more. What I'd like to see in this bill and in the discussion after it passes (devil's in the details right?!) is not only a requirement that all govt information is online permanently and for free, but that there be the inclusion of a viral GNU General Public License-like piece of the public domain whereby anything IN the public domain (i.e., govt information) has to STAY IN the public domain. There are plenty of folks (I'm looking at you Sunlight, Govtrack.us, OpenCongress, OpenCRS etc) excited about making govt information more available, more usable and more shareable and this would support their public service.

Please help Sunlight get the word out about POIA and contact your representative and let them know that they should co-sponsor POIA and assure its passage.

C-SPAN has posted their archives online. That's 23 years worth, 160,000 hours - online (almost all of their content). This is extremely cool. Get ready to waste a chunk of time today going through their archive. It should be noted that while all their programming is available, popular programs like Book TV are not embeddable (although you CAN send the link to facebook, twitter etc). Go ahead and browse the committee list for a little vicarious legislating :-)

The C-SPAN Archives records, indexes, and archives all C-SPAN programming for historical, educational, research, and archival uses. Every C-SPAN program aired since 1987, now totaling over 157,000 hours, is contained in the C-SPAN Archives and immediately accessible through the database and electronic archival systems developed and maintained by the C-SPAN Archives.

[HT to Paul Blumenthal (@PaulBlu) at Sunlight Foundation!]

Calling all 21st century librarians: the fine folks at Citability and the League of Technical Voters Project are organizing a weekend code-a-thon in Washington DC April 9th - 11th. The goal is to create open source tools aimed at improving government accessibility and accountability. But you don't have to be a coder to participate. They're also looking for librarians! Now's your chance to put your govt information skills toward an amazing project.

If you live in Washington DC area, please Sign up for the DC Code-a-thon today Join with lots of smart people working hard and having fun for the great cause of govt transparency!

[UPDATE: Scroll down for list of library happenings for Sunshine Week]

Spring has sprung with a vengeance here in SF. And that could only mean one thing: Sunshine Week!! Yes it's time once again to feel the warm FOIA on your cheek, to discuss and raise awareness of the importance of free and open government information, transparency and the Freedom of Information Act. Be on the lookout for editorials in your local newspaper (like this one in the Cleveland Plain Dealer), discuss FOIA with your friends and family (you'll be glad you did :-)) and highlight it in your libraries -- perhaps by having a public showing of the OpenTheGovernment Webcast!

OpenTheGovernment.org is having a Sunshine Week Webcast 12-2PM EST on Friday March 19 entitled "Building Transparency." The Webcast will include a host of great speakers including Norm Eisen, Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform, Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, John Wonderlich, Policy Director at the Sunlight Foundation, Kevin Goldberg, American Society of News Editors (ASNE) counsel, Miriam Nisbet, Director of the new Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), Melanie Sloan, Executive Director, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Melanie Pustay, Director of the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Information Policy (OIP), Eric Gundersen, President and co-founder of Development Seed and Sean Moulton, Director of Federal Information Policy at OMB Watch. It should be a great discussion so hope you can tune in.

What libraries are doing for Sunshine Week:

• Northern CA Association of Law Libraries (NOCALL), in association with the Special Library Association Sierra Nevada Chapter, is sponsoring 2 Sunshine Week events; one in Sacramento and one in San Francisco. Both have interesting lists of speakers and require registration for a small fee ($20 for Sacramento event and $15 for SF event). In addition, the SF event immediately precedes the NOCALL Spring Institute on information piracy, "Piracy on the Barbary Coast" which NOCALL and SLA members can attend at the NOCALL member rate, and later in the evening, a celebration of NOCALL's 30th anniversary.
• Freedom of Information Day at the New York Public Library. Tuesday, March 16, 2010, 10:30 - noon. Conference Room 18 on the lower level of New York Public Library (188 Madison Ave. @ 34th St.).

  This year's guest speaker is Heather Joseph, Executive Director, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, (SPARC), an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communications. FOIA day has been held at NYPL annually since 1993.

• California State University San Bernardino Pfau Library has partnered with the San Bernardino League of Women Voters to be a site for the OpenTheGovernment.org webinar on government transparency. This is the second year that Pfau Library has participated. You can see video of last year.

The Federal Communications Commission announced last week two new consumer tools on its broadband.gov website, The Consumer Broadband Test, which measures broadband quality indicators such as speed and latency, and The Broadband Dead Zone Report, which enables Americans to submit the street address location of a broadband “Dead Zone” where broadband is unavailable for purchase. Both test

• FCC Launches Broadband Consumer Tools (press release) March 11, 2010 (PDF).
• Broadband Test. Also available as the FCC’s first mobile app at the Apple and Android app stores.
• Dead Zone Report.

See also:
The Digital Divide: Speed Matters

40 percent in US lack home broadband

The folks over at radicalcartography.net have just made available the Statistical Atlas of the 9th US Census (1870) as a bulk download. It's great that this amazing government publication is finding interest by the public -- and that the radical cartographers are doing lots of cool projects like Census Demographics.

However, it should be noted that it's been available online for a while from both the Library of Congress and the Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research (FRASER). And of course it's also available in paper from Federal Depository Libraries across the US. I'd recommend that all you radical cartographers, cartographer wanna be's, history buffs, data geeks etc get thee to your local Federal Depository Library to see what the Federal govt has published over the last 200+ years and also check out what your libraries are digitizing and putting online. You'll be glad you did.

Presented here are all of the maps and charts from the first statistical atlas of the US Census, widely praised in its time and still a wonderful example of sophisticated graphics, the out-of-date racial/psychological nomenclature notwithstanding. The atlas is available page-by-page from the Library of Congress, but you can download it in bulk here.

[Thanks BoingBoing!]

Our pals over at the Sunlight Foundation have just posted a great infographic showing the cycle of transparency. There's just one thing missing and it fits in all parts of the cycle: policy, technology, reporting, engagement. That piece is libraries. But who's quibbling, it's a great graphic of the entire government ecosystem. Thanks sunlight!

With data being made easily accessible, journalists and bloggers can begin to dig into it, mix it up, identify relevant information and give the data context. As that critical context is provided, citizens absorb it and spread the information to others – both online and face-to-face – and make the data actionable.

Ultimately, informed citizen action creates greater public awareness; citizens become more effective, responsible advocates; holding government accountable becomes informed by data rather than inside-the-Beltway pundits, and better decisions can be made for our democracy.

As each element of the Cycle of Transparency moves forward concurrently, bringing about the changes we need to create a more transparent government, we also identify new needs.

At the end of the day, the process that the Cycle of Transparency describes is about creating a government more deserving of our trust, and ultimately, a government that allows its citizens to fully participate and hold government accountable as our Founders intended.

Gov 2.0 International: Global Innovation Meeting Local Challenges, "The O'Reilly Gov 2.0 Online Conference." Thursday, March 11th. Cost: Free.
9:00am - 11:15am US-PST
12:00pm - 2:15pm US-EST

Gov 2.0 is a worldwide revolution—from the United States to Australia and everywhere in between. Members of government are interacting with citizens via social media and open data efforts are spreading from city to city. At this Gov 2.0 Online Conference, you'll hear about open government efforts in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Israel. The speakers will share stories and lessons learned, and answer your questions. Learn about some of the Gov 2.0 best practices that have helped effect important change in other countries, and discuss effective ways to use specific tools and processes in other settings.

Vivek Kundra, Federal Chief Information Officer of the United States, spoke at the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs in Seattle last week and outlined some of the current problems of government Information Technology and some of the approaches he is taking to address those problems.

• Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra speaks about Government 2.0. [streaming video] ustream.tv [about 30 minutes, plus 30+ minutes of questions and answers]

See also:

• Federal CIO Describes Problems, Changes in IT, by Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service (Mar 4, 2010).

  It takes the Veteran's Administration 160 days to process benefits for veterans, he said. "That's because the Veteran's Administration is processing paperwork by passing manila folders from one desk to another"

  Another example of an outdated and inefficient agency is the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which takes three years to process a patent, he said. "One reason is because the U.S. PTO receives these applications online, prints them out, and then someone manually rekeys the information into an antiquated system," he said.

• Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra - Making Government Work: Closing the IT Gap to Deliver for the American People [Event Announcement] University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs in Seattle, March 4, 2010.

February 2010 marked the first month where the only documents posted to the Lost Docs Blog were receipts submitted during that month or during the last week of the preceeding month.

We also established a new blog category that we hope we will not need to use very much. That category is "Explanation Needed" and if you need an explanation, see my blog entry about it.

Now on to the February 2010 Lost Docs Report and Appeal

REPORT

In February 2010, we posted 27 "lost docs" e-mail receipts sent by GPO to the librarians who reported these missing documents. These civic minded librarians in turn e-mailed us their receipts. How many reports did GPO receive? Only they know, but the more people who send their fugitive docs e-mail receipts to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info, the more accurate our count will be.

Of these 27 reported items, two items have been cataloged by GPO since the initial report. You can view this list by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and looking at the postings with February 2010 dates. We are appreciative of these new records.

In our view, six of the items reported to GPO and posted to the blog in January were either out of scope for the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) or were already in the catalog. You can view these items by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/false/ and looking for items with February 2010 dates.

In three of these "false positive" cases, it looks like GPO had received the tangible item near the published date of the item and cataloged an electronic equivalent, but did not distribute the tangible item to the Federal Depository Library Program. This may or may not be in accordance with GPO SOD 301 which states that budget permitting, tangible documents will be offered when both tangible and online formats are available.

With the available information in these three item CGP records, it is unclear whether GPO made a conscious, budget related decision to not offer these publication or just forgot to send them out. We encourage GPO to begin putting notes explaining why a given item was not distributed to the FDLP into the item's bibliographic record.

If you are interested in viewing this new category of publication, visit http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/explain/ and look for items with February 2010 dates.

As I stated in the post introducing the "Explanation Needed" category of the Lost Docs blog, we strongly encourage people with instances of CGP cataloged but non-distributed federal documents to use GPO Help and not GPO's Lost Docs form.

APPEAL

If you like the concept of a public listing of fugitive documents reported to GPO, there are a number of easy ways to help us:

1. If you report a fugitive document to GPO, send your e-mailed receipt to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info. We welcome any item reported to GPO in the past month. It is best if you can send us the receipt the same day you get it from GPO. Some e-mail programs will support auto-forwarding. If so, please consider autoforwarding items where the subject contains "lostdocs submission."
2. Visit the blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and comment on the listed items. Comments can include -- Did your library receive the item? Did you find it in the CGP? Do you think the item is out of scope for the CGP? Did you report the item as well and so on.
3. Post the blog link to your website or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
4. Subscribe to the blog feed at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/feed/
   or better yet incorporate the feed into your website or blog.

We mentioned GovPulse a few months ago as it was one of 3 finalists in the Sunlight Foundation's apps for America 2 Contest. But here's a reminder to check it out.

GovPulse is an easy-to-use, open-source Federal Register browser. It lets you find any kind of notice, notification and solicitation that a federal agency puts out. GovPulse parses that data flow and gives you a way to browse the tens-of-thousands-of-pages-log register by agency, category or date. It also includes tools for visualizations and analysis of the register. For instance, check out the agency page to see sparklines of the notices from each agency, or the map of places mentioned by an agency. or search the Federal Register for proposed activities by location.

GovPulse is a great addition to the documents/policy junky digital toolbox that includes govtrack.us, OpenCongress, OpenCRS (or, to toot my own horn, the CRS digital archive!) OpenSecrets, Legal Information Institute (LII), Justia. What are others that should be in this toolbox? Please leave us a comment with other suggestions.

Yes it's census season again. And to mark the coming of the 2010 census, The US Census Bureau has digitalized all the decennial censuses in pdf from 1790 through 2000. Check out how your city/town/state/district has changed over the 210 years of the census. Census geeks might also want to check out this handy guide to the census called Measuring America: The Decennial Censuses From 1790 to 2000 where one can read the actual questionnaires for each census and get background history on each census. Oh and don't forget American Factfinder, the Census's database for the 1990 and 2000 census, American Community Survey, Economic Census, and annual economic surveys. Factfinder includes quick facts, mapping tools and more.

Happy data hunting!

According to Aliya Sternstein at NextGov there's a proposal in the draft federal broadband plan to create a .gov video archive called video.gov. It'll be similar to the government's data.gov initiative. Wonder when they'll create a documents.gov? Oh yeah, they already have that! It's called the FDLP and it's been around for almost 200 years!!

A proposal in the draft of the government's imminent broadband plan would create a YouTube-like online archive called Video.gov to preserve agencies' Web content and possibly information provided by the media, an official with the Federal Communications Commission said on Monday.

The planned national digital archives for the 21st century would expand upon the government's Data.gov Web site, a warehouse of downloadable federal statistics, and be maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration, the Library of Congress and other agencies, said Eugene Huang, FCC's director of government performance and civic engagement for the national broadband plan.

[Thanks for the tweet Michael Riedyk at DotGov]

In response to the Open Government Directive, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has created a web page devoted to its Open Government Initiatives (http://www.archives.gov/open/). Currently, it lists four NARA datasets: CFR, Federal Register, Archival Descriptions from ARC, and Organizational Descriptions from ARC. These listings conform to the Open Government Directive call for agencies to create a gateway at the specific web address at http://www.[agency].gov/open.

But, in addition, NARA has created "a records control schedule website that allows the public and Federal agencies to browse scanned copies of unclassified, NARA-approved records control schedules." (http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/rcs/). The only "announcement" of this new service so far has apparently been a response to a question on the NARAtions blog. Kate has more details and background at ArchivesNext. (Big hat tip!).

Back on September 18, 2007, the House Judiciary Committee chaired by John Conyers (D-Michigan) held a hearing entitled "Warrantless Surveillance and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act". In that hearing, Conyers posed some questions to the Justice Department to get at the Department’s views on the legal framework governing electronic surveillance under the amended Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) -- we've been tracking FISA for some time on FGI. The Committee hearing volume (pdf) was published in June 2008 without the Justice Department’s answers to these questions, because they were provided to Congress too late to be included in the published record.

As you might remember, back in December, 2005 the NY Times broke a story about the Bush administration secretly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials. FAS as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and other civil liberties organizations have been tracking the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy.

Many thanks to Steven Aftergood and the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) for submitting a FOIA request to make public Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein's written responses to those questions posed about this important program and bringing to light the legal perspective that held sway within the Bush administration's Justice Department.

“If the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) was perfectly legal as has been claimed, why would companies who cooperated in it need immunity?” the Committee asked. (To protect classified information, among other reasons, the Department responded.) “Is the President free to disregard any provisions of FISA with which he disagrees?” (No, not exactly.) “If an individual in the United States is suspected of working in collusion with persons outside the United States–such that an investigation of one is in effect the investigation of the other–under what circumstances, generally, would you use criminal or other FISA wiretaps?” (Targeting of persons in the United States can only be done under FISA procedures.)