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Big week for open access to government information
You almost certainly have seen at least one story in the past week about "Open Government" and the release of new data. Reporters have slowly been picking up on a massive release of information spurred by President Obama's Open Government Directive. (See: New 'high value' data posted to data.gov.) Below are a few announcements and stories that you may find of interest. But, in addition to all the data released this week was a new policy that will, potentially, affect usability of government information in the future. In the December 8, 2009 memo (Open Government Directive [pdf] Memorandum For The Heads Of Executive Departments And Agencies, M-10-06, Peter R. Orszag Director, Office of Management and Budget) that implemented the President's Open Government Initiative, OMB specifically mandates open file formats.
To increase accountability, promote informed participation by the public, and create economic opportunity, each agency shall take prompt steps to expand access to information by making it available online in open formats.And, OMB defines open formats as:
An open format is one that is platform independent, machine readable, and made available to the public without restrictions that would impede the re-use of that information.This is big news for two reasons. First, it should lead the government away from proprietary formats which are hard to preserve, hard to re-use, and typically require either proprietary software or only operate on specific platforms, or both. Think: documents in ODF format rather than Microsoft Word. Second, the directive mandates formats "without restrictions [on] re-use." Think: no DRM (and no licensing restrictions!). As the ODF Alliance noted back in December when the OMB memo was released, much of government information is still released in "documents" which are not ideal for re-use of information even when the document formats are open. But, this is still an important, essential step:
Like it or not, government bureaucracies are still very document-centric and there is a lot of government “data” stored in documents, the challenge being how to provide easy access to this data. ...With today's announcement, the Obama Administration has taken an important step on open government data and acknowledged the role open formats play in this regard. For document-centric governments, an open document format remains essential to delivering on this promise.Open formats will help libraries that want to preserve digital government information by making it easier and less costly to do so. Here are some of the announcements about releases of new government data:
-- Obama Administration To Require Government Agencies to Make Information Available in Open Formats. ODF Alliance, December 08, 2009.
- Open Government Initiative White House.
- Another Milestone In Making Government More Accessible and Accountable. White House.
- U.S. Government, OSTP, Open New Troves of Data to the Public
- Justice Department Announces Release of New Information Online as Part of President’s Open Government Initiative
- How "Open Gov" Datasets Affect Parents and Consumers. White House.
- Open Government Initiative. White House.
New ‘high value’ data posted to data.gov
Government Posting Wealth of Data to Internet, By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, New York Times (January 22, 2010).
The Obama administration on Friday is posting to the Internet a wealth of government data from all Cabinet-level departments, on topics ranging from child car seats to Medicare services. ...Under a Dec. 8 White House directive, each department must post online at least three collections of "high-value" government data that never have been previously disclosed. ...All the new data collections will be added to the government's Web site, data.gov.Continue reading
data.gov.uk
The United Kingdom has it's own version of data.gov and it has the added cachet of being promoted and advised by Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
- data.gov.uk This site seeks to give a way into the wealth of government data. [T]his means it needs to be: easy to find; easy to licence; and easy to re-use. We are drawing on the expertise and wisdom of Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt to publish government data as RDF – enabling data to be linked together.
- Tim Berners-Lee unveils government data project, BBC (21 January 2010). Web founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee has unveiled his latest venture for the UK government, which offers the public better access to official data. A new website, data.gov.uk, will offer reams of public sector data, ranging from traffic statistics to crime figures, for private or commercial use.
Another review of Google’s Case Law Search
As announced last year, Google Scholar searches now include legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate, and supreme courts. An earlier review said that it would not replace commerical case law providers but that it does offer is an amazing place to start case research. A new review echoes those findings:
- Google Scholar: A New Way to Search for Cases and Related Legal Publications, By David Tsai and Courtney Minick, LLRX (December 30, 2009). [Previously Posted by: The Bar Association of San Francisco, republished with permission.]
...Google Scholar will not replace commercial legal publishers such as LexisNexis® or Westlaw® any time soon. The value in paid services lies mostly in the editorial work they provide on top of caselaw -- e.g., headnotes and cite checking features... Something else to keep in mind -- Google Scholar is limited to case law, and does not include statutes or regulations... All together, many lawyers have concluded that Google Scholar is a great place to conduct preliminary research, or to review new cases that have not yet been affected by precedent.Continue reading
NY Times publishes documents
More than once here at FGI we have lamented the fact that newspapers have not used the web to link to documents (of all kinds, not just government publications) that they cite. The New York Times is doing a better job of this than most. I recently realized that they even have a server named documents.nytimes.com. I noticed this when following a story (Army History Finds Early Missteps in Afghanistan, By James Dao, December 30, 2009) about a new, unpublished Army history of the war in Afghanistan. The report, "A Different Kind of War," was "written by a team of seven historians at the Army’s Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and based on open source material, it is scheduled to be published by spring." The Times posted the document online http://documents.nytimes.com/a-different-kind-of-war#p=1 , but not as a PDF or other downloadable format, but as a series of page-images. I would certainly prefer to see the option of downloading the entire document and can't see why the Times didn't provide that option. (There are no ads on the pages I viewed, so it isn't a matter of forcing you to view an ad for every page you read.) Presumably the published version will be available for downloading and preservation, but it would be better if this version was also available for downloading and preservation. That would make it easier for scholars to use now and easier to compare changes when the final version is released. I also noticed that, if you go to the root web directory of the Times documents web site (http://documents.nytimes.com) you are redirected to http://documents.nytimes.com/atom which is an RSS (actually "atom" -- a similar format) feed of documents posted. That is excellent! Continue reading
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