e-Government Perspective in Florida
The message that US libraries are increasingly seen as government information/service centers is spreading through the regular media. At least that's the impression that I get from this Florida Times-Union column: Libraries are expected to be our e-government service By DONNA PAZ KAUFMAN I like the way the column ends after explaining the lack of financial support for the nation's libraries:
As engaged citizens and civic leaders, it is time to acknowledge that the trend continues to point to technology for efficiencies in government and convenience for citizens - and this makes good sense. Yet when government services, educational institutions, medical programs and disaster programs rely on public libraries for support, the libraries need to be prepared to respond. Librarians are trained to provide assistance. It's what they do. But until public libraries are recognized for the greater role they've been fulfilling since the advent of information technology, the wait in line or on the phone will be that much longer.More anecdotal evidence that even when information and services are online, brick and mortar places increase their usefulness. Continue reading
e-Government in Argentina – who’s reading?
Thanks to the blog BiblioTICando con humor (blog bibliotecario por Diana RodrÃguez), I became aware of this paper about eGovernment in Argentina: Gobierno Electronico: donde esta parada la Argentina? by Paula Nahirnak. IF I understand this paper correctly, it has some very interesting things to say. I say IF because my understanding of it is formed by my approximate 5th grade Spanish level plus hints from Google Translate. So, if any fluent Spanish speakers would look over this six page document and let me know if I've gone wrong, I'd be grateful. The paper appears to focus on the delivery of government services and information by Argentina's provincal government. A year and a half ago the provinces were given a decree by the central government to undertake electronic activities. For reasons I can't translate well enough to understand, the authors of the article graded provinces by how well these four classes of information were web posted:
- Information regarding provincal debt.
- Provincial budgetary law.
- Information about the budget.
- Information about tax collection.
From a table it looks like performance in these categories significantly improved from 2002 to 2006, and especially after 2005. The article also references a 2005 article, Global E-Government 2005 by Darrell M. West and from what I can tell, Argentina ranted with countries like Spain, Lithuania, Korea, Iraq(!), Romania and a few others. What I find really fascinating about the article, again if I understand it correctly, is that I'm not sure who this electronic information is actually for. Page five of the article has a chart of public employees by province who have access to computer equipment. Even the top rated area, the capital of Buenos Aries, only 51% of the government's own workers have access to computers! The median for the country seems to be 26.7%. So almost three quarters of Argentina's government workers cannot access the web posted information from their employer. On the last page of the article is a table expressing access to home Internet connections in terms of people to one Internet connection. The capital again wins out with "just" five people per Internet connection. Nationwide average is 26 people per Internet connection and in the NEA y Litoral province, there are 83 people for every home Internet connection. So I don't think most people at home could get much out of Argentina's drive to put government information and services on the Web. Perhaps their citizens are going to libraries. But as I've said, this is MY reading. If you have a better one, please let us know in comments. But it does look like the digital divide is hard at work all over the planet. So how do we help the 30% or so of Americans here at home w/o Internet access get their government information?
Continue readingA long term perspective on local info
Bill Bell is the editor of the Whittier Daily News. According to a recent column, he has been a journalist for 50 years. This long experience has given him a long perspective on access to government information, especially from law enforcement agencies. What has this experience taught him?
Today, part of the big picture in the news business is how official agencies of the government make it harder and harder to come by information that is suppose to be available to the public. That might seem like a fairly narrow concern, yet it is a symptom of a chronic societal cancer that is helping to destroy our species.Much of his column is about how open and informal local information gathering used to be. In Mr. Bell's view, it depended on police being intelligent enough to know what information could be divulged w/o spoiling their case and reporters sophisticated enough not to burn their sources for a single juicy story. But over all, he implies the level of information sharing, at least at the local level was high. How does he see the situation now?
What's it like today? The Freedom of Information Act has spelled out that a huge amount of government information and records are available to the public. But government agencies seem to make it exceedingly difficult to get to the records they consider most sensitive, despite the FOIA. And, as for local cops and deputies being forthcoming with information that should be available immediately, that's a bygone era. We get it when they feel like providing it.How true and how sad. But I'm glad to see we still have people like Mr. Bell pointing out the importance of transparency at all levels of government. Continue reading
Thanks Info-to-Go! / InfoTubies
My workplace subscribes to the Info-to-Go electronic "new web sites" newsletter. I was very happy to see that the January 2007 issue issue carried mention of our videos page. Subscribers can see what I'm talking about. Nonsubscribers will have to trust me on this one. Thanks Info-to-Go! If you or your library has produced a video promoting or celebrating government publications, information or e-government available at your library, please send us the link so we can add it to our video page. If you really like one of the videos featured on the page, please consider nominating it for Information Today's first InfoTubies award. Continue reading
Remembering Ridley
Ridley R. Kessler, Jr., retired documents librarian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, died in Durham, N.C., on Jan. 11, 2007, of congestive heart failure. He was 65. I meant to post on Ridley earlier than this, but for some reason I've been very slow reacting to the death of colleagues and relatives of friends this past year. But Ridley Kessler deserves to be written about in many venues. One eloquent tribute I've seen is at Chapel Hill and can be found at http://www.lib.unc.edu/spotlight/kessler.html. I did not know Ridley well, although I met him at several documents conferences. I considered him to be one of the deans of our field, even when I felt I needed to disagree with him. I believe that our main differences were on tactics. Ridley believed in electronic information. He wanted to break down the walls of the depository library. As I perceived him, he wanted librarians to "stop whining" about the loss of print and embrace the opportunities of the future. His full embrace of an electronic future seems to be untypical of his generation. While I see the ideal (and to a certain extent the actual) future as one of mixed media, I agreed with Ridley that electronic information has tremendous potential and that librarians need to do more to realize that potential. Like Ridley, I didn't think that government documents could afford to hide behind physical depository walls. And while I wouldn't use the expression "whining librarians", I think Ridley had a point that too many depository librarians are focused on what they can't do as opposed to what they can do or could do if they joined with other libraries. Some of us are fearful of the future and bless Ridley for making us face that in that gruff way of his that I observed at conferences. While I and a few others challenged Ridley on whether the electronic portion of our future should be centralized with the government or decentralized with libraries, I think the government information have lost a champion this month. If you have memories of Ridley Kessler, won't you either leave a comment here or send an e-mail to dnlcornwall AT alaska.net for me to post for you? Continue reading
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