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NARA Cannot Assure Complete Transfer of Bush Records
NARA Cannot Assure Complete Transfer of Bush Records, by Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News, January 5, 2009. Steven has a link to “National Archives Oversight: Protecting Our Nation’s History for Future Generations,” hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, May 14, 2008 and comments on the the integrity of the process of transferring the records to the National Archives.
Although the President is supposed to obtain the written views of the Archivist prior to any proposed destruction of non-permanent records, "the final disposal authority rests with the incumbent president… regardless of the Archivist’s views."Continue reading
SEC to use XBRL for Financial Reporting
SEC Approves Interactive Data for Financial Reporting by Public Companies, Mutual Funds, Securities and Exchange Commission, Press Release 2008-300, Washington, D.C., Dec. 18, 2008. The SEC plans to phase out the EDGAR system and replace it with its Interactive Data Electronic Applications (IDEA) database. The IDEA system is based on eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), one of a number of XML markup languages which are used to encode documents and serialize data. The Press Release says that, "With interactive data, all of the facts in a financial statement are labeled with unique computer-readable 'tags,' which function like bar codes to make financial information more searchable on the Internet and more readable by spreadsheets and other software. Investors will be able to instantly find specific facts disclosed by companies and mutual funds, and compare that information with details about other companies and mutual funds to help them make investment decisions." See also: SEC To Replace EDGAR With 'IDEA' Test Drive Interactive Data!. SEC's Interactive Financial Report Viewer! The Viewer allows you to interact with XBRL filings made as part of the SEC's Voluntary Filing Program. Continue reading
Putting Citizens First: Transforming Online Government
A report by the Federal Web Managers Council provides some useful suggestions about how to make government information more useful.
- Putting Citizens First: Transforming Online Government A White Paper Written for the 2008 – 2009 Presidential Transition Team by the Federal Web Managers Council, November 2008.
There are approximately 24,000 U.S. Government websites now online (but no one knows the exact number). Only a minority of agencies have developed strong web policies and management controls. Some have hundreds of "legacy" websites with outdated or irrelevant content. We have too much content to categorize, search, and manage effectively, and there is no comprehensive system for removing or archiving old or underused content. Agencies should be required and funded to conduct regular content reviews, to ensure their online content is accurate, relevant, mission-related, and written in plain language. They should have a process for archiving content that is no longer in frequent use and no longer required on the website.The report solicits comments, so I wrote the following to one of the co-chairs, Sheila Campbell: Ms. Campbell, I am writing to comment on and make a suggestion for Putting Citizens First: Transforming Online Government A White Paper Written for the 2008 – 2009 Presidential Transition Team by the Federal Web Managers Council, November 2008 http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/documents/Federal_Web_Managers_WhitePaper.pdf May I suggest that, as you work with Federal Web Managers and with Congress for information dissemination requirements, that you keep in mind two things: 1. Long-term preservation and usability of and access to even "out of date" government-created information is essential in a democracy. (We need an accurate *record* of government, not just a snapshot of what is current.) 2. The *primary* information role of the government is the creation and initial communication of information; government agencies will need help to ensure long-term preservation of information. (Agencies may cease to exist, or get merged with other agencies, or change their missions, or simply lack funding for providing long-term access to older information. Even the National Archives does not have a mandate to preserve everything that needs to be preserved.) In keeping these two assumptions in mind, I suggest you promote two simple procedures: 1. Agencies should always, at the time information products are created, instantiate their information in open, preservable, formats (e.g., not proprietary, commercial formats). 2. Agencies should always publicly announce and describe information products and make their digital information available through the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and the Government Printing Office (GPO), where appropriate. GPO and the more than 1000 FDLP libraries can help preserve your digital information and keep it available for the long-term. Finally, I realize that the day-to-day requirements of e-government and creating reliable transaction-based information services for citizens may seem to conflict with the long-term usability requirements of instantiating information in preservable, open formats. But there are successful models of doing both. For example, the Census Bureau makes its statistical information available through a transaction-based service (American Factfinder (http://factfinder.census.gov/), while, at the same time making its raw data available in an operating-system-neutral, software-neutral format for researchers. There are many archivists and librarians and technical experts who can help agencies with these issues. Thank you for your thoughtful report. I hope these comments help. Continue reading
Power and Influence and Authority
Here is an interesting series of interrelated posts in which there is a discussion a proposal that twitter should allow search filtering. Whether you twitter or not, whether this was a good idea or not, the ideas are interesting and pertain to government information as well. Here we find reference to 3 kinds of power: 1. the ability to force you to do what you don’t want to do; 2. the ability to stop you doing something that you want to do; and 3. the ability to shape the way you think. Number 2 has an obvious analogy to the no-distribution FDLP because without distribution of the raw information it is difficult for libraries -- or anyone else -- to do interesting things like build full text indexes and specialized collections that combine government and non-government information or build mash-ups. But Number 3 is just as suggestive, because the interfaces that GPO and other government agencies provide give them the power to shape what questions we can ask and what answers we get. I'm not proposing a conspiracy of thought control, I am just saying that no one agency can provide all the possible views and interfaces and functionality that the richness of government information deserves. GPO continues to insist that making information "publicly accessible [at an] Internet site" (SUPERINTENDENT OF DOCUMENTS POLICY STATEMENT 301) is adequate in the digital age. Distributing the raw data would do so much more and allow so much more extensive and better use of the data. Why not allow that? Is it about "power"...?
- Bloggers Lose The Plot Over Twitter Search, by Michael Arrington, December 27, 2008
- Concepts of ‘authority’ in a networked world, by John Naughton, December 28th, 2008.
- The future that won’t be distributed, by Doc Searls, Dec. 30, 2008
Happy New Year!
Happy new year to all of you. Whether you are on vacation and peeking at the news, or reading this as you just get back to work, here is something interesting and fun to see: Martin Wattenberg. Data visualization. Media art. Collective intelligence. Wattenberg is a computer scientist and new media artist. He is the founding manager of IBM’s Visual Communication Lab, which researches new forms of visualization and how they can enable better collaboration. Check out his many projects (e.g., Name Voyager, the Baby Name Wizard with data from the Social Security Administration, or history flow, visualizing the editing history of Wikipedia pages, or Many-Eyes, an experiment in open, public data visualization and analysis). This is another good example of what interesting things can be done when we have complete access to information. When the raw data are free, we can do so much more than the single views of data provided by government agencies. Read more about Wattenberg here: He creates ways of seeing information, by Billy Baker, Boston Globe, December 29, 2008. Continue reading
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