Our friends at The Gov Doc blog have put out an emergency appeal to help save the Nevada State Library's Head of Government Publications.

All of us on the FGI Volunteer team support asking the Nevada State Library to reconsider its position.

Here is The Gov Doc post in its entirety. I'll have a few comments after:

=====================
Greetings to all.

We hope everyone had a fun & refreshing Thanksgiving holiday. Ours were well spent with family and plenty of good food however we received some distressing news upon returning to work. We learned that the Nevada State Library and Archives has decided to eliminate the position, Head of Government Publications. The reason we are distressed is because this position is crucial for the capturing, cataloging, and dissemination of state publications and we fear that without the leadership that this position provides Nevada publications will slip into oblivion to the detriment of the people – the people whose taxes pay for this research and are therefore entitled to the opportunity to access this information.

Below is a letter of protest that you can cut & paste into a new message to send to Ms. Daphne DeLeon and Mr. Michael E. Fischer. Please feel free to edit the letter to personalize it or write your own. Don’t forget to sign your name at the bottom complete with your organization and title.

Here are their email addresses, please include both in the “Send To” line:

Daphne DeLeon, ddeleon@nevadaculture.org

Michael E. Fischer, mfischer@nevadaculture.org

One last thing, please send a blind copy of your email to Ian Campbell (icampbell@washoecounty.us) and Lisa Printz (lprintz@washoecounty.us).

Thank you and hopefully together we can make a difference,

Ian and Lisa

Attn: Daphne DeLeon, Division Administrator, Nevada State Library & Archive

Michael E. Fischer, Director, Nevada Department of Cultural Affairs

It was with shock and dismay that we learned about the Nevada State Library's decision to eradicate the position, Head of Government Publications. And it is with the great concern stimulated by this decision that we are writing to request that the state reconsider what we believe to be a short-sighted decision that will negatively impact current and future Nevada residents' access to critical information. When one considers that the federal government produces 70% of the world's information it becomes apparent that federally funded information is invaluable and since tax-payers dollars purchase or support these research endeavors the citizens of this nation have a right to access this information. Much of the states' research receives partial funding from the federal government and therefore is included in the figure (70%) given above. Compounding traditional problems of access to government funded research are the changes in the dissemination of this information to the populous. Due to advances in technology and in an effort to save money most government funded research is only available online therefore, capturing and cataloging this information for the purpose of retrieval are vital to the community's information needs especially since governmental agencies are not obligated to maintain access to this information. So, much of this information is ephemeral in its availability unless someone captures and catalogs it. Currently, there is a phenomenal amount of previously released information that needs to be captured and cataloged in addition to the present research being released now and future research that will require capturing and cataloging for without this work preserving access to federal and state research will not be possible. While there are many individuals attempting to apply order to federal documents, there are far fewer that work towards capturing, cataloging, and disseminating state government publications. This position, Head of Government Publications, fulfills this role and provides much needed leadership in the enactment of the NRS 378.170 and for the state of Nevada in developing a Nevada state publications depository to ensure the permanent retention of state publications. We feel that this position, Head of Government Publications, serves a critical and vital gap in the public's information needs and we therefore, strongly urge the Nevada State Library to reconsider this decision.

Thank you and sincerely,
=====================

As someone who participates in government virtual reference, I can assure our readers that having stuff online is NOT the same as being able to lay your digital fingers on it. Doubly so when that stuff isn't actually online.

As someone who used to run a state's document program, I can assure our readers that without someone whose primary role is state publications, a lot of stuff will fall through the cracks. This is based on the realization that a fair amount falls through the cracks even when there is dedicated staff.

Ian and Lisa didn't say whether the docs duties currently assigned to the position were going to be parceled out to others or be eliminated. Either choice would be a bad one. Most libraries that I'm familiar with already have most librarians doing about two positions worth of work.

So if you care about government information, especially if you live in Nevada, I hope you will consider joining this letter writing campaign. If you're familiar with the Nevada State Library, it would help if you could suggest some alternative cuts OR some alternative funding sources.

Check out my cousin Gabriel Troy's artwork using government documents.

He says about this sculpture, "Federal Paperwork Burden": "I wanted to make these Government documents accessible and inaccessible at the same time. The books are fixed by tension without a back or shelf."

He also took pages from government documents and painted over them: "These pages were cut from documents pertaining to business, agriculture, industry, and domestic issues. I have added structures to house the information."

Ok, Mr. President...fulfill your technological promises! I am very excited about some of his proposals, especially in regards to government information transparency and access.

Mashable.com posted "A Final Look at Presidential Technology Policy" earlier this week and they had this to say about Obama vs. McCain's plans:

Rather than focusing on anti-trust and and subsidies, as Barack Obama intends to do, what would be better would be focusing on creating an environment where corporate taxes were lowered, and other tax incentives were emphasized for start-ups who focus on better information infrastructure. Senator McCain’s tax plan is moderately favorable towards this theory, though it is likely simply a coincidence convenient to this argument rather than a well thought out technology policy.

When it comes to the basics, both presidential candidates are generally on the right track, and are generally in agreement as well. I’ve outlined above where they differ, though, and I think history has shown that Barack Obama’s desired policy directions would be more detrimental to innovation and growth for the tech sector.

Interesting that they believe Obama's desired policies may be detrimental to technology. I'm not well versed enough on the issues of Broadband/Anti-trust & subsidies to know whether or not I agree. What do you think?

Mashable also has a great blog post on "Government 2.0: The Presidential Transition". I agree with the author's sentiment that the new President must look to the needs of the entire nation, and we need to giver our input too.

...citizens should be engaged in the transition process,...In an increasingly fragmented media and information society, that level of engagement requires more than a press release and newspaper coverage. It means full multimedia engagement using blogging, speeches, informal gatherings, mobile technologies, podcasts, online video, and widgets. The outreach should also use social tools that allow bidirectional conversation, increasing citizen participation and interest in government.

There is a great blog post over at the Center for Democracy & Technology's Policy Beta Blog:

"Innovation, the Open Internet, and the Next President".

It gives an overview of what our new President should do (or not do!) in regards to encouraging innovation and openness of the internet. Some points include:

One of the new president’s first tasks will be to select top officials for executive branch positions. The FCC, the FTC, DoJ, NTIA, and the new Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (created by recently passed legislation) all will have a hand in policies with potentially significant impact on the Internet...

The president also should avoid new copyright policies that fail to protect emerging forms of free expression in the digital realm...

If the next president wants to encourage innovation, preserving the open character of the broadband Internet should be a top priority, right up there with the commonly cited goal of continuing to improve the nation’s broadband infrastructure.

I would also add that our new President needs to support digital preservation technologies and standards, as well as digital authentication of documents online.

Here is another post on a similar vein: "Next President Has 'Open' Opportunity".

The Center for Democracy & Technology also has a page entitled "The Internet in Transition" with a blueprint for keeping the internet open, innovative, and free.

Now that a new administration will be coming into office soon, it is more important than ever to encourage our Government to make Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports publicly accessible online. Here at FGI, the topic of CRS Reports has been written about often, but I was inspired to create this blog post and take action after seeing Starr Hoffman’s DLC conference presentation last week (click on "Search Document" and enter "Starr Hoffman". Her PowerPoint, "Encouraging An Informed Citizenry" will come up as a PDF to download).

Starr is responsible for maintaining University of North Texas's Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports Archive. In her presentation, she gives tips for writing to Congressmen and lists some past legislative efforts (Bills that never passed both houses of Congress) to make CRS Reports publicly accessible. I have gathered some other Bills, as well as all the contact information for the sponsoring Congressmen and have included them in my Delicious.com "CRS" tag as well as in this list:

1998 H.R. 3131, S. 1578
1999 H.R. 654, S. 393
2000 H.R. 4582
2001 S. Res. 21
2003 H.R. 3630, S. Res. 54
2007 H.R. 2545, S. Res. 401

Senator John McCain
Introduced S. 1578, S. 393, S.Res. 21, S. Res. 54, & co-sponsored S. Res. 401
Senator Mike Enzi
Co-sponsored S. 393
Senator Leahy
Co-sponsored S. 393, S. Res. 21, S. Res. 54, and S. Res. 401.
Senator Tom Coburn
H.R. 4582 co-sponsor when he was in the House.
Senator Jim DeMint
Introduced H.R. 4582 when he was in the House.
Senator Joe Lieberman
Introduced S. Res. 401 and co-sponsored S. Res. 21 and S. Res. 54
Senator Tom Harkin
Co-sponsored S. Res. 54 and S. Res. 401
Senator Susan M. Collins
Co-sponsored S. Res. 401
Senator John Cornyn
Co-sponsored S. Res. 401

Congressman David Price
Co-sponsor for H.R. 3131, H.R. 654, H.R. 3630, and H.R. 2545
Congressman Christopher Shays
Introduced H.R. 3131, H.R. 654, H.R. 3630, and H.R. 2545
Congressman John Campbell
Co-sponsored H.R. 654
Congressman Tom Tancredo
Co-sponsored H.R. 4582
Congressman Jay Inslee
Co-sponsored H.R. 3630 and H.R. 2545

And you can find and contact your local Senator and your Representatives too.

James A. Jacobs did a Google search this past June for "Received through the CRS Web" OR "CRS Report for Congress" combined with site:house.gov and then again for site:senate.gov and got around 600 hits with each. For example, here are some domains he found that you can search within for CRS Reports or to search for those in Congress who may support public access to CRS Reports: bartlett.house.gov, holt.house.gov, radanovich.house.gov, weldon.house.gov, bennelson.senate.gov, carper.senate.gov, lugar.senate.gov, murray.senate.gov, etc.

For more information on CRS Report legislation efforts, visit this site which contains a "Campaign for Online Access" section.

Spread the word about this post and good luck in writing to your Congressmen! If you have other ideas, please share them in the comments.

Library Services and Content Management is continually working to improve the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications and the services it provides. One of the upcoming services that we are excited about is the creation of a login page for depository libraries that will enable them to take advantage of a range of authenticated services not otherwise available. These include:

• Selective dissemination of information. This will give depositories the ability to direct the system to send emails when resources in a particular area of interest are cataloged. Depository libraries will be able to set up notifications by item number or by SuDocs stem, for example;
• “Save records to local pc”. Currently the options are to email records to a defined email address up to twenty at a time, or to search, retrieve, and download up to one thousand records from the CGP per session.
• RSS feeds;
• Retained preferences that will persist across sessions;
• Links to FDLP-related pages including the FDLP Desktop and the Federal Depository Library Directory.

We are anticipating a demonstration of the FDLP login page at the Fall Conference and a subsequent December release of this functionality.

Also on the agenda is an enhanced Federal Depository Library Directory. We would like to ask for input from users for improvements we could make to the FDLD to enhance the user experience. Please submit suggestions through AskGPO at http://gpo.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/gpo.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php. Use the category Federal Depository Libraries, subcategory Catalog of U.S. Government Publications, then CGP Enhancements/Suggestions.

I recently finished the book:



Theoharis, A. G. (2004). The FBI and American democracy: a brief critical history. Lawrence, Kan: University Press of Kansas.



While I won't offer a full book review here, this is a well-documented, must-read book for anyone who still believes that needless governmental surveillance of innocent citizens unconnected to criminal activities is either non-existent, an aberration of the 1960s or a creation of the Bush Administration. This sort of clearly illegal activity has been documented as going on since the 1910s, through Presidents of both parties and up to the current day. The justifications have changed. But secrecy combined with a view of dissent as treason is a solid, bipartisan tradition. It's just more obvious now.



The reason I'm highlighting this book on FGI and not my personal blog is three-fold. First, Mr. Theoharis makes note of another book he wrote that should be valuable to people researching the FBI. It is called The FBI: A Comprehensive Reference Guide ed Athan Theoharis with Tony G. Poveda, Susan Rosenfield, and Richard Gid Powers (Phoenix: Oryx, 1999). An annotated bibliography on pages 385-396 of that book lists articles, congressional hearings, books and microfilmed collections. Second, on pages 176-178 of "FBI and American Democracy", Theoharis has provided brief biographies of all the directors of the FBI through the present.



Thirdly, in his "Note on Sources" Theoharis offers extensive notes on his use of the Freedom of Information Act to obtain materials for his history. Here is an excerpt that shows both the power and limitations of FOIA (p. 179-180):

First, researchers seeking FBI files must pay processing fees of ten cents per page. Given the volume of records created since the bureau's establishment in 1908, these costs effectively preclude any individual from being able to fund the acquisition of the millions of pages of relevant FBI records. Researching the history of the FBI requires a strategy of identifying the most important and representative files.



Second, while the FBI must release all records relating to a specific FOIA request, to make such records requests a researcher must know how FBI officials created and then maintained records. A requestor can identify the files of a named individual or organization but might not know the names of special code-named programs (COMPIC, COMRAP, ABSCAM). Furthermore all records pertaining to an identified individual or organization were not all filed and indexed under that individual's or organization's name. Some were maintained in the secret office files of senior FBI officials (and most of these office files have been destroyed). Others were maintained in other files, not all of which are cross-referenced in the FBI's index to its central file system. For example, the FBI's file on the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) does not contain all records relating to the FBI-HUAC relationship. Some are extant in the FBI's files on Alger Hiss, others in the code-named COMPIC file -- and conceivably still others are included in the FBI's files on Richard Nixon, Robert Stripling, or other unknown code-named programs. Furthermore, in my effort to understand the relationship between the FBI and the Justice Department, I requested all FBI files on named attorney's general, but the released files offer limited insights. Conceivably this relationship can be understood by researching the files on both proposed and rejected prosecutions of major cases or otherwise unidentifiable files in the FBI's 66 (Administrative Matters) classification.

Another challenge identified by Theoharis is the apparent capriciousness in releasing materials:

"Having filed multiple FOIA requests, I have been struck by the variances in processing of the same report included in different files -- having information withheld in one case but not in another."

It seems like it shouldn't be this difficult and expensive for citizens to learn about their government's activities. But at least we're able to chip away at government abuses with FOIA.

...the U.S. is not the leader in e-Government...at least according to a study released last week by the Brookings Institution. However, we do rank third, but we are "falling behind other countries in broadband access, public-sector innovation and implementation of the latest interactive tools to federal Web sites".

Two other articles I read this morning also got me thinking about where we stand as a nation with digital government information: "Old-school Recordkeeping Meets the Digital Age" and "Government Data and the Invisible Hand". The first article made me feel quite frustrated with our lack of digital preservation progress, especially after reading this quote:

"...lacking a statutory prescription for maintaining electronic records, most agencies print and file [records] as they would paper documents, according to a recent investigation by the Government Accountability Office...Under current regulations, NARA does not require agencies to maintain records in their native formats. So for now, many agencies still print e-mail messages and file the paper versions.Although the filing process is relatively easy, the practice has a major weakness: It eliminates the searchability of digital documents". (Gee, ya think?!)

Envisioning all those emails being printed by government agency employees makes me think of Google's April Fool's joke: the "Google Paper" service!

I hope the next President and his administration will take the issue of e-government and digital preservation/authentication very seriously. Obama and McCain have touched on the issue a bit, including Obama's vague vision of online government transparency:

"I want people to be able to know, today, this issue is going on...Today, President Obama talked about his proposal for $4,000 student college-tuition credits. It’s going to be going to this congressional committee, these are the key leaders in the House and Senate who are going to be deciding on the bill, here are the groups that support it, you should contact your congressman. The more that we can enlist the American people to stay involved, that’s the only way we can move an agenda forward."

The second article touches on this issue as well, and urges the next Presidential administration to "embrace the potential of Internet-enabled government transparency [by reducing] the federal role in presenting important government information to citizens". A profound statement, but read the rest of their argument as stated in the abstract:

"Today, government bodies consider their own websites to be a higher priority than technical infrastructures that open up their data for others to use. We argue that this understanding is a mistake. It would be preferable for government to understand providing reusable data, rather than providing websites, as the core of its online publishing responsibility.

Rather than struggling, as it currently does, to design sites that meet each end-user need, we argue that the executive branch should focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that exposes the underlying data. Private actors, either nonprofit or commercial, are better suited to deliver government information to citizens and can constantly create and reshape the tools individuals use to find and leverage public data. The best way to ensure that the government allows private parties to compete on equal terms in the provision of government data is to require that federal websites themselves use the same open systems for accessing the underlying data as they make available to the public at large".

This makes sense if you think of it from the context of all the mashups, RSS feeds, and other interactivity with web content that exists. The rest of the article makes some other interesting points and counterarguments, such as

"A government data provider can provide a digital signature alongside each data item. A third party site that presents the data can offer a copy of the signature along with the data, allowing the user to verify the authenticity of the data item, by verifying the digital signature, without needing to visit the government site directly".

Easier said than done? Is the "digital signature" they talk about the same as GPO Digital Authentication?

We are making some progress in e-Government and digital preservation of government information but we need to do better. Like Obama said, we can start by contacting our congressmen to voice our concerns and suggestions for improvement on e-Gov initiatives and digital preservation...because I don't know about you, but I sure don't want the government to use "Google Paper".

As part of the fruit of the ALA GODORT State and Local Documents Task Force's State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project, I used the project blog to create a listing of state-level campaign finance databases.

So far I've got nine states: Alaska, Alabama, Colorado, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Missouri, Nevada and Ohio. Do you know of other state campaign finance databases? Either leave a comment below of drop me a line at dnlcornwall AT alaska DOT net.

And if you use any of the databases listed above, I'd really love to see your comments on the project blog entry for that database.

Update: September 4, 2008

It breaks my heart and embarrasses me to do this, but I've discovered that the circulation figures I used for the post below were flawed. Specifically, the reports I consulted treated internal processing as a checkout.

Once we recalculated our circ stats to only include transactions involving real patrons and ILL transactions, we found that our document circulation has been relatively low and flat for the last five years. No visible bump from cataloging the collection.

Is this the end of the story? I doubt it. First, we only completed the retro project this year, so a number of documents haven't been available in the catalog for too long. Second, staff are now in a better place to identify and promote federal documents then we were last year. This may make higher circulation possible. But I don't know. I'll get back to you.

- Daniel

======Original Post==========
At the Alaska State Library, we recently completed a barcoding project which finally let us put all of our manual shelflist items into our catalog for our patrons to find. This also meant that our holdings went onto Open WorldCat for others to find.

I'm happy to report that we've had a 7% increase in checkouts of federal documents compared to the previous fiscal year. I'm sure the cataloging project was responsible because the rate of increase for documents checkouts outperformed other parts of the collection.

Since the project was only completed in the fiscal year that ended on June 30th, I expect to see more growth in documents checkouts in the coming year.

There are many ways to make open a tangible collection to the world. Good cataloging is a start!

Here is a pre-print (not-final version) of a paper with fascinating ideas about distribution of government information:

• Robinson, David, Yu, Harlan, Zeller, William P and Felten, Edward W, "Government Data and the Invisible Hand" (2008). Yale Journal of Law & Technology, Vol. 11, 2008.

They say that "the federal government must reimagine its role as an information provider" and more specifically, that the next administration should...

...reduce the federal role in presenting important government information to citizens. Today, government bodies consider their own websites to be a higher priority than technical infrastructures that open up their data for others to use. We argue that this understanding is a mistake. It would be preferable for government to understand providing reusable data, rather than providing websites, as the core of its online publishing responsibility.

While the paper does not address preservation and long term access explicitly, it does suggest that the government should provide a "permanent location" with a permanent URL for "each piece of government data." It also implies (I think) that something like LOCKSS will ensure authenticity and permanent access ("As long as there is vigorous competition between third party sites, we expect most citizens will be able to ?nd a site provider they trust.") I believe that oversimplifies the problem and relies too much on hope and not enough on a social commitment to preservation through public funding of memory organizations.

Thanks and a tip of the hat to Joshua Taubere (GovTrack.us) for pointing to this article. He describes and comments on the paper in a post on the Open House Project blog: (Government Data and the Invisible Hand June 6th, 2008 by Joshua Tauberer).

Today, some mixed good news/bad news about the availability of free public data in the UK. As we've noted here before (e.g., Privatized Data Woes in Britain and News from abroad: UK open statutes & RFID in Canadian coins and The Semantic Web + Government Information = Serendipitous Reuse) the British government sells limited-use licences to its GIS data on a cost recovery basis. Now, as part of a proposed national geoportal, the UK would "create a single point of entry on the web to data held by public bodies such as local councils, Ordnance Survey (OS), the British Geological Survey and the Environment Agency." But, as the story says, "A new system will make geospatial information available without charge - yet we'll still have to pay."

• An Inspired debate on access, by Michael Cross, The Guardian, May 22 2008.

First, some very good news. Civil servants revealed last week that the British government has begun work on a system to make all the geospatial data it holds on the natural environment available for free inspection and re-use. Now the bad news. In this context, "free" means we will still have to pay to download much key data, especially if it is to be published or otherwise used commercially.

On May 9, this past Friday, the White House issued a memorandum doing away with the old category of "Sensitive But Unclassified" and replacing it with "Controlled Unclassified Information."

The memo is titled, "Memorandum For The Heads Of Executive Departments And Agencies - SUBJECT: Designation and Sharing of Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI)".

Here is how the memo defines CUI (bolding mine):

a. "Controlled Unclassified Information" is a categorical designation that refers to unclassified information that does not meet the standards for National Security Classification under Executive Order 12958, as amended, but is (i) pertinent to the national interests of the United States or to the important interests of entities outside the Federal Government, and (ii) under law or policy requires protection from unauthorized disclosure, special handling safeguards, or prescribed limits on exchange or dissemination. Henceforth, the designation CUI replaces "Sensitive But Unclassified" (SBU).

This is such a broad brush that it could be used to exempt anything from public disclosure. By definition, isn't anything the government produces at least somewhat pertinent to the national interests of the United States? Otherwise, why waste taxpayer dollars and government time creating the product?

Then there's the allowance for "policy." I'm sure that DoD's 2002 domestic propaganda program probably "required protection" from "unauthorized disclosure" for "policy" reasons.

This is a definition that appears to be designed to give the executive branch total control over what information is released by the US Government regardless of existing law. It is an order that should be challenged by Congress today with no funding permitted for its implementation. Assuming the President doesn't back down, it should be one of the first items revoked by the incoming President.

Government information items should be properly classified and protected, safeguarded when containing individuals personal data, or public record. No twilight zone of "It's unclassified, by I can't give it to you for reasons of government policy."

Erik Ringmar, professor of social and cultural studies at the National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, wants others to join him in putting restricted government documents on the web.

I say this is awesome! There's certainly precedent for this kind of activism: Jared Benedict liberated a bunch of USGS maps and just last week, I uploaded the Iraqi Perspectives Report to the Internet Archive. Anyone else out there set free a government document? Leave us a comment.

So, I've taken it upon myself to start an organisation called MLOP, the "Movement for the Liberation of Old Papers". What I do is hack into restricted websites, download the documents I'm interested in, and then use my favourite open-source paint program to remove the copyright statements from each page. Next I assemble the pages into one single pdf file and upload it to the Internet Archive, where it will become universally available to both researchers and citizens. Yes, it does take a bit of time, but it's a very worthy cause (and I have a hardworking research assistant to help me).

I feel strongly about this, and I'm prepared to live with the legal consequences of my actions. This, after all, is the new frontier of civil rights - the right of access to information. How else can corruption be stopped and falsehoods exposed? How else can people in power be held accountable? I'd go to prison for the old parliamentary papers if I had to. Ever after I would proudly brag about having liberated an old House of Commons report from the clutches of market capitalism.

While FGI normally focuses on US government information policy issues, there is a conflict going on in the UK that mirrors some of the recent stories about public data being used by private companies in a privileged way, forcing the taxpayer to pay twice for their data.

An April 17, 2008 Guardian article titled A costly 2008 Domesday Book details how not one, but two British agencies contracted with commercial companies to post government compiled data. The result:

After seven years of legal wrangling, an official, complete and constantly updated list of addresses in England and Wales is about to become available for commercial use. The National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG), compiled from data supplied by local councils, is being promoted as the best list of property addresses since the Domesday Book.

Free data it is not. Although prices have yet to be finalised, the commercial firm hosting the service said this week it will cost between £15,000 and £20,000 a year. Profits will be shared among local authorities to help them keep data up to date.

The gazetteer is not the only address database on the market. The state-owned Ordnance Survey also offers addresses as part of its MasterMap digital geographical database of Britain.

Most of the article is about campaigns to free the data. In analyzing the roadblocks, they talk about issues that will be familiar to US readers:

"We would like to give it away free," says Nicholson. However, he says, local authorities are not going to give their work away when they have to pay for the use of postcodes from the Royal Mail's Postcode Address File. Neither can Ordnance Survey, which is required by the Treasury to show a return on its activities, and regards MasterMap as a key part of its revenue-generating portfolio.

We wish the Free Our Data campaign well.

This is probably a good to time to mention that what FGI objects to isn't the selling of data per se, but the selling of data that has already been compiled at taxpayer expense. If a private company wanted to raise its own venture capital, compile its own address list completely independent of government sources, we'd be all for it charging whatever the market could bear. But a private entity should not be allowed to be the sole, fee-based dispenser of information that has been compiled by government agencies using money confiscated through taxation. THAT's what we're against.