Courtney Holliday from the First Amendment Center reports that the Environmental Protection Agency is halting its library closures plan "in response to heavy criticism from lawmakers and advocacy groups":

"Under pressure from members of Congress and groups such as the ALA, the EPA announced in January that it would not close additional libraries until more public outreach was done, according to the Library Journal."

So it's not over yet, per se.

Rory Litwin of Library Juice reports that ALA's Washington, DC office and Committee on Legislation have started a Federal Libraries Wiki to cover government library closures. It's just beginning, so it needs some beefing up, but sadly, I'm sure that content will be added frequently.

I recently posted the following two items on the Government Information Division blog:

• FARA Database Online... Soon
• USA.gov Revamps Its Site Layout

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.

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.

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.

My time as blogger of the month is almost through, so I'm going to end with a quote from a section of the EPA's Climate Change Kids Site called, "So What's the Big Deal?"

"It is important to understand that scientists don't know for sure what climate change will bring. Some changes brought about by climate change will be good. If you live in a very cool climate, warmer temperatures might be welcome. Days and nights could be more comfortable and people in the area may be able to grow different and better crops than they could before. But it is also true that changes in some places will not be very good at all."

One of my classmates pointed this gem out.

Politico reporter John Bresnahan noted a brief item currently on the front page of CQ's PoliticalMoneyLine about the "minor changes" the Federal Election Commission wants to make to its System of Records.

"In a bland Federal Register Notice requesting public comment on a System of Records, the Federal Election Commission seeks to restrict access to the reports of the agency’s Inspector General unless the requestor has the permission of the individual involved."

Bresnahan explains that a former FEC official is being investigated for misappropriation of funds that were used to settle a sexual harassment complaint. According to PoliticalMoneyLine:

"For the FEC this means the Inspector General’s report on the activities of the last Staff Director and his supervision, or lack of supervision, by the Commissioners could not be made available to the White House or Congress unless the former staff director and other individuals involved granted approval."

The FEC is accepting public comments on the requested revisions until the end of the business day tomorrow. Here's how to submit a comment, from the Federal Register notice:

Comments should be addressed in writing to Thomasenia P. Duncan, Privacy Act Officer, Federal Election Commission, 999 E Street, NW., Washington, DC 20463, and must be received by close of business on February 23, 2007. Comments also may be sent via electronic mail to Privacy@fec.gov.

Peggy Garvin reported on the SLA Government Information Division blog that the Office of Management and Budget launched FedSpending.gov this past week.

"The website is intended to provide a searchable database of federal grants, contracts, loans, and other spending. This initial version fulfills a requirement in the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (PL 109-282), known as FFATA."

The site is sparse right now, but it does have a PDF copy of the FFATA and its implementation schedule.

The OMB has been using e-government websites as a method of providing transparency, as seen with ExpectMore.gov and Results.gov.

The latter site is geared towards federal employees and aims to show how well government agencies are performing in relation to the President's Management Agenda. It's kind of a strange site, though. One of the boxes on the front page is entitled, "Don't You Agree? Apply to You?" This reminds me of a subject heading from a Nigerian scam email for some reason.

I find the rating system for the Executive Branch Management Scorecard a bit silly:

• Green for success,
• Yellow for mixed results, and
• Red for unsatisfactory.

The ratings are given for each agency at its highest level. This is understandable, but a classmate of mine pointed out that you're not seeing how divisions of the agencies are performing. If you work for the IRS, you're only seeing how the Treasury Department is doing on the whole. If you work for the USCIS, you're only seeing how Homeland Security is performing. (Or not performing, if you look at the PDF of the December 2006 scorecard.)

I don't know how much guidance each division receives on how to improve or maintain their scores, though. If you have any insights on this, please feel free to comment.

Jim A. Jacobs linked to some items about this week's FOIA hearings. The Guardian has published a summary of the testimony by AP. It also includes a link to GAO's report, "Freedom of Information Act: Processing Trends Show Importance of Improvement Plans," [PDF] which was released yesterday.

The abstract notes that the FOIA request backlog is increasing at many agencies. However, it also says that it is difficult to properly gage trends in reporting because the time lags are reported in median times, not average times.

The Executive Order referenced in the report, "Improving Agency Disclosure of Information," was signed by President Bush on December 14, 2006. It outlined a plan to improve the FOIA process, including improved customer service for requesters and increased access to government information on federal websites.

James Jacobs commented on the post I published on e-government. He said:

"Evidently (and I haven't checked on this so this is purely an anecdote!), libraries are beginning to be seen as e-govt resources. Good you say, but the worry comes in when librarians are more and more expected to help their patrons fill out the govt forms that they've downloaded from library public computers. In other words, librarians are being seen as defacto public information officers."

From the discussion on this subject that I had in one of my classes, I think what James is saying is true. I'm not a public librarian, so I am basing this opinion off of what I heard my class. My professor, Paul Jaeger, co-wrote an article in Library Journal last year on this subject. He and his co-authors took a poll of librarians to investigate the growing reliance on libraries as an e-gov source. From the article:

"So, as libraries become valuable community access points to e-government services and resources, especially in post-hurricane emergency relief, their efforts as agents of e-government represent an unfunded mandate. The library community must respond with better training and education. However, government agencies that both fund libraries and rely on them for their public access computing and Internet access also must provide greater support." (Bertot 35)

Here is the citation for the article: Bertot, John Carlo, et al. "Drafted: I Want You to Deliver E-Government." Library Journal 131.14 (15 Aug. 2006): pp.34-39.

Wade-Hahn Chan reported in Federal Computer Week this week that the first part of the Electronic Records Archives (ERA) will make its debut in September. ERA is the system that the National Archives is designing to preserve the federal government's electronic records.

The first release, according to NARA CIO Martha Morphy, will allow federal agencies to transfer their electronic records directly to the ERA. Four agencies currently submit their records to NARA for archiving; in addition, NARA's Electronic Records Management Initiative has provided all agencies with information on how to handle the formating of electronic documents.

The White House has requested a $12 million increase in the budget for ERA for FY2008. Speaking of the Bush administration, a second version of ERA will be developed for the George W. Bush Presidential Library to archive the administration's electronic records. The FY2008 budget requests $38 million to archive these documents.

You can learn a bit more about ERA in a video [WMV] linked to on the project's website. I found the FCW article at the eGovernment Resource Centre.

I am in a class about e-government this semester. In our second meeting, our professor showed us the excellent eGovernment Resource Centre. This website from the government of Victoria, Australia has compiled a large directory of e-government websites and news links. You can browse by topical groupings or just browse through an A to Z index. In addition, the site offers RSS feeds that provide such information as new resources for government web designers and site updates as they happen. I find the Daily Digest feed particularly useful, and I will occasionally link to stories I've found there, such as the one about ExpectMore.gov in my previous post. 

This headline is cheesy, but I can't resist. ExpectMore.gov is a website from the Office of Management and Budget that was launched last year to provide public reports on the performance of the many federal programs.

You can browse through the list of Performing Programs, which are the ones OMB rates as being from adequate to effective, and the list of Not Performing Programs, which are either ineffective or have not adequately demonstrated results. The website explicitly explains why they gave each program its respective rating, and also explains what actions are to be taken to improve the program. This includes improving programs that are already highly rated; visit the report for the On-going Pest and Disease Management Program as an example.

Wyatt Kash of Government Computer News recently reported in the article "Federal Web site introduces new analysis tools" on the many improvements ExpectMore.gov began rolling out this week. The website discusses on its What's New page the addition of a CSV (comma space delimited) [ZIP] file containing all the Program Assessment Rating Tool data.

Kash's article adds, "Programs have also been more thoroughly tagged with up to three identification tags, said Shea, so researchers are likely to get more useful search results." I didn't see any information about this during a quick surf of the site, but the article indicated these improvements were just beginning to be introduced. Keep an eye out for more information.

Hi all,

I'm Chris and, as mentioned, I am FGI's BOTM for February. Since I've admitted to being a Government Accountability Office (GAO) fan, I thought I'd kick things off with a pertinent GAO report.

The GAO released a preliminary report today critical of how the EPA handled a proposal to change the threshold of toxic chemical releases that must be reported for inclusion in the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI).

Currently, if a facility releases annually 500 pounds or less of toxic chemicals, it can fill out the short Form A instead of the long Form R. The information in Form R is included in the TRI, which is available to the public. In January, the EPA proposed changing the minimum amount of releases that require the use of Form R to 2,000 pounds.

In its initial findings, the GAO found that the EPA "did not adhere to its own rulemaking guidelines in all respects when developing the proposal to change TRI reporting requirements." It found that EPA management essentially forced the threshold change into the decision-making process of the work group that was analyzing changes to the TRI reporting guidelines, then gave the internal and regional offices little time to review the change.

PDFs of the full report and its highlights is available on the report's abstract page.