Have a Transparency Question for Obama? Act Now!
If you have a question for President-Elect Obama on the subjects of transparency or government information, the next few days are your chance to ask him directly. Or support your favorite open-government organization. Change.gov has opened Round Two of Open for Questions where registered users get to ask questions and/or rate the questions of others. The first round only lasted a few days and so might this round. So get moving! And if you see good questions or ask some of your own on government information policy, please leave a comment so like-minded people can follow you. Continue reading
Guide of the Week: Care for Service Members
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently identified Care for Service Members as one of 13 urgent issues facing the next President and Congress. The page on care for service members explains why this is an urgent issue:
As of October 2008, over 33,000 servicemembers have been wounded in action, resulting in serious injuries such as amputations, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We have identified a number of weaknesses with the health care returning servicemembers are receiving as well as the complex and cumbersome disability systems they must navigate.Today on Guide of the Week, we'll talk about some librarian produced guides from the ALA GODORT Exchange Wiki that can help inform citizens, Congress and President-Elect Obama on this issue. Although there is no guide currently on the wiki that focuses exclusively on Veterans Care, here are three guides that should provide helpful information to people studying this issue:
- Budget (Bert Chapman, Purdue University, 2001) Last updated 3/10/2008
- Government Documents on Military History (Bert Chapman, Purdue University, 1999) Last updated 3/10/2008.
- Chemical and Biological Disarmament (Grace York, University of Michigan, 2000) Last updated 1/9/2005
Informal Portal for Gov’t Comment Taking
I joined FriendFeed on Christmas Day and I've already started wondering how it could be used to promote government resources. One of the things that FriendFeed lets you do is to create "rooms" where items of interest can be shared in various ways, including imported RSS feeds. So I have built a room I called Talk Back to Uncle Sam. The room takes feeds from Regulations.gov and gov't blogs that accept comments from citizens. Please have a look at the room at http://friendfeed.com/rooms/talk-back-to-uncle-sam and share items that you find interesting. If you are a FriendFeed subscriber, please consider telling others about the room. And if you're a fellow documents geek, please consider joining me at FriendFeed. I'm using the handle alaskanlibrarian there. If you like Twitter, I think you'll enjoy FriendFeed. Continue reading
Guide of the Week: finalizing plans for the 2010 Census
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently identified Finalizing plans for the 2010 Census as one of 13 urgent issues facing the next President and Congress. If you're not a docs librarian or a policy wonk (there are a few of you reading FGI, right?) you might not realize the importance of this issue. The GAO spells out why every American should care about this issue:
The results of the 2010 Census are central to apportionment, redistricting congressional boundaries, and distributing around $300 billion in federal aid to states and localities each year.Translation - The results of the 2010 census will redraw the legislative districts in your state, possibly changing how you are represented. The results will spark the redrawing of your congressional district, unless you live in Alaska or Wyoming, which have statewide Representatives. This redrawing could make it easier or harder to unseat your current Member of Congress. In addition, the 2010 results will affect how much federal money each state will receive. In terms of Census planning, I'm afraid that for the first time in considering these critical transistion issues, I can't find any guide from the ALA GODORT Exchange Wiki that would help you understand planning for the next census. For that, you had best just read the GAO page on the subject. On the other hand, if you're looking on how find and use census information once it's published, librarians can help. A lot. Check out these guides for a start. Next week I'll be dealing with librarian produced guides relating to "caring for service members." So if you have any guides relating to that topic, please try and post them to the Handout Exchange this week. Hopefully next week I won't get caught flat-footed again. Continue reading
Guide of the Week: Improving US Image
Note: Below is the entry that should have appeared last Saturday. My apologies for the delay. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently identified Improving the US Image Abroad as one of 13 urgent issues facing the next President and Congress. Today on Guide of the Week, we'll talk about some librarian produced guides from the ALA GODORT Exchange Wiki that can help inform citizens, Congress and President-Elect Obama on this issue. There appear to be two librarian-produced guides that look helpful in this area:
- Government Publications on Islam (University of Colorado at Boulder Government Publications Library, 2008)
- Public Opinion Sources (Univ. of California--Berkeley, 1999) Last updated 5/9/2006
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