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Free Government Information (FGI) is a place for initiating dialogue and building consensus among the various players (libraries, government agencies, non-profit organizations, researchers, journalists, etc.) who have a stake in the preservation of and perpetual free access to government information. FGI promotes free government information through collaboration, education, advocacy and research.

FGI’s comments and recommendations for the GPO draft report of the task force on an “all-digital” FDLP

[editor’s note 10/28/2022: we updated the text below about 100% of govinfo being published digitally in order to clarify where we got that number and why we use the 100% number rather than the 97% born-digital that is most frequently cited.]

We want to thank GPO Director Halpern for calling a “Task Force on a Digital FDLP” and for all of the members of the task force for diligently working through the many thorny issues regarding the future of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). Director Halpern has requested public comment on the draft report until October 14, 2022. We at FGI are submitting the following as our public comments.

1. The task force was asked to study “the feasibility of an all-digital FDLP.” The group was charged to define the scope of an all-digital depository program and recommend how to implement and operate it.

Although the task force working groups concluded that the FDLP can and should go “all-digital,” the draft report was also consistent in noting that “all digital” does not mean everything will be available only in digital formats (pp. 7, 10). The final report should emphasize this point and clarify and clearly state that print remains a viable format for some of our most important government publications as well as an important access method – and recommend exploring future print opportunities like “print and distribute on demand” as an option for depository libraries.

2. The draft report has lots of good ideas but we suggest that some clarifications and reorganization will bring the findings and recommendations of the different working groups into better focus.

We suggest that the final report should begin with a clear “problem statement” that the report will then address. We suggest that this should have two points:

  • Currently 100% of government Public Information is published digitally. (We are extrapolating that 100% estimate from table 11 of the 2018 Library of Congress study “Disseminating and Preserving Digital Public Information Products Created by the U.S. Federal Government:A Case Study Report” which showed that only three of the surveyed agencies reported less than 100% of their publishing output was born-digital. This 2018 estimate is no doubt closer to reality for most agencies than the 2009 estimate of 97%.)
  • Only a small fraction of that born-digital government information is currently being curated or preserved in any regular fashion. This has created an enormous preservation (and, therefore, long-term access) gap. Any “all digital FDLP” must recognize and address this enormous digital preservation gap.

    (Note: We base this on the research we have done examining the contents of GPO’s Govinfo repository and 2020 End-of-Term crawl data. We found that the great bulk of new digital Public Information is produced by the executive branch (90% of all government PDFs (aka “publications” on the government web are published by the executive branch), but only 2% of the born digital PDFs in GPO’s Govinfo repository are from the executive branch. Meanwhile LC’s web harvesting is relying on GPO and NARA to take care of the executive branch [https://www.loc.gov/acq/devpol/webarchive.pdf] and, by law, NARA is treating all executive branch web content as “records,” of which only 1-3% are typically preserved. For some more details, see our post “Some facts about the born-digital ‘National Collection'”.)

These two points would put the Task Force’s recommendations into context. The primary focus of actions designed to ensure “permanent no-fee public access to digital content” must focus on ensuring the preservation of that content. No digital system can ensure “access” unless that system has control over and preserves the content it intends to make accessible.

3. To address the problem statement, we recommend that the report create long-term goals from which all recommendations would flow. It would be persuasive and most helpful if the Task Force provided explicit connections between each recommendation and one or more of the goals, showing how the success of each recommendation can be evaluated in terms of the goals.

  • Increase the preservation of all federal government Public Information.
  • Ensure permanent, no-fee access of federal government Public Information to the general public.
  • Enhance discoverability and usability of federal government Public Information for all.

4. We believe that the draft report minimizes the need to preserve the existing national print collection. It emphasizes digitization of paper documents for access and accepts and proposes even looser rules for the discarding of paper collections without adequate safeguards for the preservation of the information in those collections in either paper or digital formats. Digitizing for the sake of better access is a noble objective, but preserving the born-digital content that is currently NOT being curated and in danger of loss is a much more urgent matter than enhancing access to already well-preserved paper collections.

5. We suggest that the final recommendations and action items be grouped or labeled in categories that will clarify their purpose and scope. For example:

  • principles (free access, privacy, etc.)
  • short term tasks
  • long term objectives

6. Earlier this year we created a list of some specific long-term strategies which may be of use to the Task Force: “FGI’s recommendations for creating the ‘all-digital FDLP'”.

By reorganizing and refocusing the report on what is truly important — preservation first, access built on preserved content — the report will be clearer about the current status of preservation and access and how GPO and FDLP can contribute solutions to existing gaps and weaknesses.

Authors

James A. Jacobs, University of California San Diego
James R. Jacobs, Stanford University

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FDLP Modernization Act of 2018 introduced. Take action now to improve the bill!

[UPDATE 3/21/2018: The CHA’s business meeting has been postponed to Thursday, April 12, 2018 at 11:00 am eastern. JRJ]

On March 15th, a bill to “modernize” the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) was finally introduced. There is good news and bad news.

H.R.5305 – FDLP Modernization Act of 2018

The good news is that the bill does provide much-needed improvement of the current law in the areas of privacy, preservation, and free access to government information. It also has very strong language that attempts to address the problem of fugitive documents (those documents that are within scope of the FDLP but do not make it into the program. For more on this issue, see “‘Issued for Gratuitous Distribution’ The History of Fugitive Documents and the FDLP”). It even allows digital deposit into Federal Depository Libraries (FDLs).

The bad news is, first, that the improvements noted above do not go far enough. They have loopholes that could easily make those good features little more than halfway solutions or empty promises. Second, (and this is a fatal flaw in the digital age) the bill not only fails to create a digital FDLP, it actually writes that failure into law.

Small changes to the text of the bill can correct most of these problems. But to get those changes into the bill, librarians will have to let Congress (and their lobbyists in the ALA Washington Office, ARL and AALL!) know that they want them. These improvements are essential because this law will affect both the free access to and the preservation of government information for the coming decades.

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Government information and #critlib

I was fortunate to be able to attend the 2015 #CritlibSF Unconference, hosted at the University of San Francisco’s Gleeson Library in conjunction with the American Library Association’s Annual Conference last month. While the discussion predominantly, although by no means exclusively, focused on teaching and learning within the academic library context, the event and broader conversations within the #critlib community have given me a lot of food for thought as a government information librarian.

One of the themes in these discussions is how work within libraries can reinforce or oppose the power structures within society. It is stating the obvious that government is one of the most recognizable, and perhaps most pervasive, signs of power in our daily lives. Even an introductory narrative of government function engages with power as a concept, whether in the language of rights, democracy, or checks and balances. With the supposed consent of the governed, the government has the ability to affect (or, if you prefer, engage with) nearly every aspect of life.

Unimpeded and unmonitored access to government information is a core theme in ALA’s Key Principles of Government Information, and librarians have championed these rights for generations. Still, those of us who work with government information are frequently engaging with the firehose of content as it comes to us, however it comes to us. The publications collected and distributed through depository programs are only a small subset of the content published by agencies to websites, databases, and social media, which is itself only a portion of their informational products. If public discourse can only take place in the context of the narratives and threads of information selected by the government and those in a position of authority as being worthy of capture, it could be less representative, less inclusive, and by extension less nuanced.

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Reflections on the end of a year and the beginning of a new year

 

James and I were both impressed to see that MLIS student Crystal Vicente posted a link on govdoc-l to her paper about the effects on government information of the government shutdown. It is great to see library students addressing the issues that confront the future of government information. We’d like to see more students posting their papers to promote engagement between students and practioners. [Note: the link to Vicente’s paper has changed. Here is the correct link (as of 4/4/14) to Online electronic government information and the impact of the government shutdown on public access.]

Ms. Vincente’s paper prompted us to reflect on the issues that face government information and FDLP libraries. As we end the year and begin a new one, we offer these reflections on some of the big issues that still face us.

  1. e-government. We think it is important for librarians to differentiate between “e-government” and information dissemination by the government. The two terms may overlap in common usage, but we think it is useful to draw a distinction between e-government, which is a service that uses government information and the information itself. We think it is useful to distinguish between interactions (or transactions) with the government (which is two-way communication) and the government disseminating information (which is one-way communication, an instantiation of the government’s work and processes).E-government and the provision of information services by the government on the web will surely increase over time and this is a very important thing to monitor and evaluate, but we believe that librarians need to pay even closer attention to the (public) information that the government gathers, assembles, and creates and then uses to create such services.
     

    A citizen might go to a government web site and submit a form to find out the current population of their city or the phone number for their Representative or the current laws or regulations on a subject. This is an e-government information service driven by government information. Will the government preserve and make that information available after it is “out of date” or when it is not popular enough to warrant a full-fledged service? This isn’t hypothetical: we have already seen the Census Bureau remove whole Decennial Censuses — one of the biggest, most important collections of government information, from its American FactFinder service and announce its intention of continuing to do so as new data become available. (See: American FactFinder, American FactFinder Communications,AFF2 Expansion and Legacy Sunset, and The Future of the Decennial Census: Where is it Going?, and IASST-L For users of the US Census Bureau’s American Factfinder: that “include archived products” checkbox does nothing, officially.)

    Services may come and go, but the information itself needs to be preserved, and free access to it and services for it will need to be provided for the long term — regardless of the short-term services the government provides with that information.

    The data behind such e-government information services can be (and, in our view, should be) acquired by libraries to ensure its long-term preservation and availability. In some cases, this will be more like acquiring databases than acquiring static documents — a task which has its own challenges, but is not without precedent. (See the long history of relations between ICPSR and libraries in the preservation of social science data and delivery of data services, and and the current trend for libraries to be involved in “data management.”) E-Government initiatives are less likely to worry about long-term, life-cycle data preservation and access since many (most?) focus instead on currency of information and responses to individual queries. As we see more e-government services (such as healthcare.gov and online facilities for applying for driver’s licenses, etc.), this will become an even bigger issue and the distinction between e-government transactions and the information behind such services will become even more important.

    E-government can also create a big impact and burden on library staff (most often, unfunded), but the instantiation of the workings of government has never been more at risk as we deal with the many issues and difficulties surrounding born-digital government information.

    The availability of e-government information services should be seen, not as an excuse for reducing library involvement in government information, but as evidence of the need for even more involvement in the long-term preservation of and access to information!

    (See also E-Gov: are we citizens or customers?)

  2. the single source problem. Although the recent government shut-down was a very visible and extreme reminder of the problems of relying on a single source for any information, complete shut-downs are not the only source of problems. When we rely on a single source for creation, preservation and access to information, any decision made by that single source can potentially affect the availability or accuracy of the information. (See, for example: When we depend on pointing instead of collecting and The Technical is Political). And when all we have to rely on is commercial sources for public information, it is a sign of the failure of libraries to do their job of ensuring long-term free public access to public information.
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  4. discovery. The issue of information discovery is different from, but connected to, these other issues. When we rely on a single information provider (such as GPO or an information agency like BLS), we are limited to their interface and discovery tools and their choices of what to deliver and how. We are also limited by the “stove-piping” of information into silos. But, if libraries build collections along subject and discipline and user-community lines (instead of provenance or agency lines), one result will be new ways to discover and get information and new ways to combine information from government sources and non-government sources in ways that work better for users and that the government itself cannot do.
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  6. authenticity. The question of authenticity is not a technical problem, though technology can help. The thing that makes it hardest for information to be forged or altered or damaged is replication with trusted parties. (See LOCKSS Preservation Principles and Who do you Trust? The Authentication Problem).
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  8. fugitives. We all know that fugitive documents are an issue, especially as agencies publish more and more of their information online and outside of the traditional FDLP. We would hope that in 2014 and beyond, the community will put more energy toward fugitives. We need to collectively figure out which agencies are best and which are worst at complying with Title 44. We need to identify the current community activities that deal with fugitives (see, for example, Lost Docs), and gaps where more needs to be done. This also relates to the above issue of e-government services that provide short-term access to information, but that do not instantiate it for long-term preservation and access.
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  10. bottlenecks. We should also explore what bottlenecks to access exist besides government shutdowns. This gets into the areas of government secrecy, less access to less information territory, the digital divide, and the “information deluge.” We used to talk about “drinking from the firehose” — but the issue of finding the right information amidst too many google search results is becoming even more important. (Howard Rheingold calls this “crap detection.”) This affects librarians as well as the public. We need to select, describe, and preserve the information our communities need and then curate those collections and create digital tools and services and educational materials that will help our communities find and use the government information they need.
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  12. finding solutions. We believe that the the government information community needs to act in concert to develop solutions to digital information access and preservation. There are many possible solutions and they should all be explored. At FGI, we’ve long advocated for digital deposit to fend off the single point of failure issue (see When we depend on pointing instead of collecting), and FDL’s have put energy toward building digital collections (e.g. lockss-usdocs, archive-it, EEMs). But we think there are other avenues to explore besides the end-of-the-publication-cycle solutions. What about things like “adopt a federal agency” — where one or a group of FDL’s liaise with an agency to assure their publications and data make their way into the FDLP — FDLP libraries advocating to federal agencies that they get together to collaboratively build information architectures that facilitate preservation rather than obfuscate it etc? In other words, are there any beginning-of-the-information-lifecycle ideas that could be explored?
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  14. beyond docs…. Finally, how do the issues we’re dealing with in government information carry over and affect other library collections, services, and policies in general? To what extent is government information the canary in the library coal mine (see, e.g., What’s love got to do with it? further thoughts on libraries and collections #lovegate)?

 

There is plenty to work on! Here’s to a happy, healthy, collectible and preservable 2014!

— James and Jim

FCC launches consumer tools for broadband

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

See also:
The Digital Divide: Speed Matters

40 percent in US lack home broadband

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