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.

White House boosts social media apps, by Doug Beizer, FCW.com (Dec 15, 2009).

An application produced at Princeton University that makes it easy to search the Federal Register is an example of the applications White House officials want to see created, McLaughlin [the deputy federal chief technology officer] said. The application, named FedThread, also lets users to sign up to receive alerts about items published in the Federal Register based on keywords.

..."We can make a lot of government data available, but it doesn't really do much good unless apps developers translate it into Web sites, mobile applications or platform apps that really are useful."

The Open House Project mailing list has been abuzz this week with discussion about the availability of the Federal Register in XML format. I cannot remember a time when government information has had so many active followers and supporters and such intense interest outside the FDLP community. This is an indication of how important this change in distribution is to the public.

Now, Carl Malamud has an interview with Raymond Mosley, Director of the Office of the Federal Register and Michael L. Wash, the Chief Information Officer of the Government Printing Office (O'Reilly Radar, Oct 6, 2009). Wash says that GPO plans to add data feeds (e.g., RSS) for the FR in the near future.

Check out Carl's interview for an up-to-date, behind-the-scenes view of this important news.

The Federal Register is now available in XML for download from data.gov and GPO's FDSys (http://www.fdsys.gov/fdsys/bulkdata/FR).

• Federal Register 2.0: Opening a Window onto the Inner Workings of Government, by Ray Mosley, White House blog, (Oct. 5, 2009).
• A More Web-Friendly Register With Federal Data in XML Form, Users Have New Options, By Ed O'Keefe, Washington Post (October 5, 2009).
• Federal Register XML Release, By John Wonderlich Sunlight Foundation blog (10/05/09). "

As John Wonderlich notes, this is big news!

Now that the XML will be available, we can expect to see a renaissance of public reuse of Federal Register data. Sites that let you follow government activity by geographical or issue area will now feature more reliable, more timely data, since all that scraping and parsing will now be unnecessary. More advanced analysis will also be possible as well, allowing for trends and patterns to more readily emerge from this vital collection of national information.

According to the documentation, this version is not "official" -- yet.

The XML-structured files offered for bulk download are not part of the official on-line format of the Federal Register. While GPO’s XML files are based on the original source data submitted by Federal agencies, OFR markup, and GPO typesetting and composition markup in SGML, only the PDF and Text versions of Federal Register content on GPO Access and FDsys have legal status as parts of the official online format of the Federal Register. Additional development will be required before OFR/GPO can specify that XML files are a part of the official online edition of the Federal Register.

OpenRegs.Com To Launch Soon, National Journal, "Tech Daily Dose." April 14, 2009.

According to this brief announcment, OpenRegs.com, will take the daily XML feed of the Federal Register and offer a different view of the information. The .com site will provide greater flexibility in finding and following government regulations and will be more dynamic and user friendly than the .gov site. It is being developed by one of the co-creators of the government accountability Web site StimulusWatch.org.

I'm forwarding this heads-up from the Association of Public Data Users (APDU) list. Over the last two weeks, there have been quite a few calls for comment on proposed data collections published in the Federal Register (see below with due date).

Maybe it's because I haven't had my coffee yet this morning, but I was a little peeved by my failed information search. I found the Census Bureau's FR posting (Federal Register: January 7, 2009 (Volume 74, Number 4) Page 672) (btw, I tried in FDsys.gpo.gov but they've not loaded Volume 74 yet) but at first was stymied because the summary page has no link to the Census Bureau's Web site, and does not have contact information or any link to more information. The full listing has the information, but comments must be written, no Web submissions :-|

Ok fine, I go to www.census.gov and after more than 5 minutes of search/browse, give up on finding exactly *how* to submit comments on the proposed "Quarterly Financial Report" or "Survey of Local Government Finances." What's even worse, census.gov does not have a "contact us" link on it's first page. I finally found it in the footer of a second level page, but could find nothing in the Question and Answer Center about RFCs, proposed data sets etc. *sigh*

I guess this is turning into an FDsys comment. I noticed in FDsys that you can sign up to receive the daily Federal Register Table of Contents which is cool. But there needs to be a way to browse only the requests for comments (or rules changes, notices...) of specific agencies in the FR as well as receive email or RSS of requests for comments. There also needs to be a link in the FR to the agency in question and not just their top level site but to the place on the site with information on the RFC and directions for how to submit comments. And lastly (this is not an FDsys comment but a general agency comment) RFCs should be submitted online.

So go ahead and submit comments for the proposed data collections below, I dare you.

• Census Bureau
  Quarterly Financial Report (February 9, 2009)
  Survey of Local Government Finances (School Systems) (March 13, 2009)
• Office of Management and Budget
  2007 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)-Updates for 2012 (April 7, 2009)
• Bureau of Labor Statistics
  Labor Market Information (LMI) Cooperative Agreement (March 3, 2009)
• Employment and Training Administration, Department of Labor
  O*Net Data Collection Program (January 30, 2009)
• Science Resources Statistics, National Science Foundation
  Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges (March 10, 2009)
• National Institutes of Health
  Information Program on Clinical Trials: Maintaining a Registry and Results Databank (February 5, 2009)
• Administration for Children and Families, Department of Health and Human Services
  Feasibility Test for Design Phase of National Study of Child Care Supply and Demand (February 5, 2009)
• Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Department of Health and Human Services
  The AHRQ Data Inventory (January 30, 2009)
• Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Department of Health and Human Services
  CAHPS Home Health Care Survey (March 10, 2009)
• Surface Transportation Board, Department of Transportation
  Class I Railroad Annual Report (February 9, 2009)
  Quarterly Report of Freight Commodity Statistics (February 9, 2009)

federalregister.gov is back online today. So, we can feature the new Federal Register Electronic Public Inspection Desk!

This new desk grants the public access to documents that will be published in the next day’s Federal Register as early at 8:45 a.m. EST. Previously, such documents could only be seen by viewing the documents physically located at the Office of the Federal Register in Washington, DC.

This development is perfectly timed for the 2008 Presidential election. Traditionally, after an election the Federal Register experiences a large increase in regulations, and this year is no exception. Now, anyone, anywhere, can monitor this flurry of activity through the click of a mouse. The web site has been particularly useful in providing up-to-the minute access to Treasury Department and Federal Reserve regulations issued in response to the ongoing financial crisis.

See the press release for more...

The new documents inspection desk of the Federal Register is apparently offline. The new service (Federal Register Announces Launch of New Electronic Public Inspection Desk) was announced last month.

This morning, when I try to reach www.federalregister.gov I get a message saying "Service Unavailable."

regulations.gov is up and working as is the GPO Access Federal Register service.

Thanks a bundle to Steven M. Cohen who Twittered about this new item we've added to our remixes page:

Justia Regulation Tracker - This free service takes Federal Register data and provides the ability to create RSS feeds of search results. The search gives you more options than the GPO Advanced Federal Register Search because the Justia search gives you agency dropdown choices and the regulations abstracts appear on the results pages. Justia is led by former CEO and FindLaw co-founder Tim Stanley. They make their money from advanced web services to lawyers, but provide free basic legal info to the public.

More information on Justia and this new service can be found at http://blog.librarylaw.com/librarylaw/2007/04/feeding_the_rea.html.

This is a perfect example of a service that couldn't be started if GPO implemented a two-tiered model of information access - Free but restricted access at Depository Libraries and fee access for vendors wishing to reuse government information.

But how will GPO be able to sell government information if people who obtain this public domain information republish for free with better searching and alert tools than GPO? We don't think they can without restricting the no-fee information model in some way. So we at FGI think they shouldn't try.

Finally, if this serendipity by Twitter intrigued you, drop by and friend me at http://www.twitter.com/dcornwall