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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.

GPO & Federal Judiciary Announce Pilot Program of Enhanced Public Access To Federal Court Opinions

GPO & Federal Judiciary Enhance Public Access To Federal Court Opinions Government Printing Office, Press Release, May 4, 2011 No. 11-23.

The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) and the Federal Judiciary are launching a one- year pilot program providing free public access to court opinions through GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys). The joint project was approved by the Judicial Conference of the United States and GPO's Congressional oversight committee, the Joint Committee on Printing. When fully implemented, the pilot will include up to 42 courts. The Judiciary continually has sought ways to enhance public access to court opinions. Free access to opinions in all Federal courts is currently available via the Judiciary's Public Access to Court Electronic Records service (PACER). Building on that success, staff from the Administrative Office of the United States Courts met with GPO management to explore making opinions available through FDsys, which can provide the public with a robust search engine that can search common threads across opinions and courts. The public will be able to access court opinions in the next several months through GPO's Federal Digital System: www.fdsys.gov
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Reductions in EIA’s Energy Data and Analysis Programs

Along with reductions at the Census Bureau and reductions in federal openness websites, we now have word from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) that budget reductions will "require significant cuts in EIA's data, analysis, and forecasting activities." The press release has a long list of projects and publications that will reduced, terminated, and curtailed:

Cuts include:
  • Do not prepare or publish 2011 edition of the annual data release on U.S. proved oil and natural gas reserves.
  • Curtail collection and dissemination of monthly state-level data on wholesale petroleum product prices, including gasoline
  • Terminate updates to EIA's International Energy Statistics
  • Halt preparation of the 2012 edition of EIA's International Energy Outlook.
  • Eliminate annual published inventory of Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States.
Big Hat tip to Gary's Full Text Reports blog! Continue reading

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Lessig: “The architecture of access to scientific knowledge: just how badly we have messed this up”

Lunchtime Listen: Lawrence Lessig, speaking at CERN, talks about how hard, expensive, and limited our access is to scholarly information and how we have created this system.

He mentions the problem of prohibiting access to an individual chart in an article posted for free on the internet. (Around the 16 minute mark: slide 189 et seq. [don't be intimidated by the number of slides; Lessig's presentation style is wonderful and clear and fast and enjoyable and no slide stays on the screen for more than a couple of seconds].) We see this same problem in government information that incorporates copyrighted information with the results being anything from limited access to prohibited access to the non-copyrighted information. This is the poison pill problem of copyright. Continue reading

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Hearing to address White House social-media preservation policies next week

David Ferriero, the Archivist of the U.S., will be testifying next week at a hearing that will address digital preservation of White House social media.

  • White House officials to explain social-media policies next week, By Gautham Nagesh, The Hill (04/28/11). Senior White House officials will explain the Obama administration's policy for preserving tweets and other messages sent using social networks at a House Oversight hearing next Tuesday. The White House's official policy states that all messages between the president and his staffers and third parties on social-media sites like Twitter and Facebook must be preserved under the Presidential Records Act. That includes all tweets as well as direct messages and replies sent to official accounts. But panel Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said it remains unclear what the administration's policies are for unofficial accounts still used for official communications, such as the personal accounts of some staff members....
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Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor on Legislative Data Release

Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor on Legislative Data Release, by John Wonderlich, Sunlight Foundation, (April 29, 2011).

Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor today sent a letter to the Clerk of the House calling for better access to the House's electronic data.
The letter asks that the House release its "legislative data" in "machine-readable formats" and establish standards for the House and its committees to include open data formats such as XML. Continue reading

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