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Web Sites Push For More Transparency and Accessibility In Government
Web Sites Push For More Transparency and Accessibility In Government, By K.C. Jones, InformationWeek, June 23, 2008. This article describes the work of OpenCongress and MetaVid, which give citizens an open window into government activities.
OpenCongress ...gives readers access to more detail and depth of information than traditional news stories. The free, open source, nonpartisan site does so by combining traditional news stories, summaries of bills, sponsors, status, roll calls on the latest issues put up for votes, and an area for user comments. ...MetaVid... archives video from proceedings in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. Citizens who want to see what their representatives said on a specific issue can search for and play the specific footage they see.Continue reading
Capitol Words
Today, The Sunlight Foundation announces a new project called Capitol Words which gives an at-a-glance view into the daily proceedings of the United States Congress through the simplest lens available-a single word.
For every day that Congress is in session, Capitol Words displays the most frequently used word in the Congressional Record.For more about the project see John Wonderlich's post on The Open House Project website. Of course, it has a widget (see below what it looks like and get the code here), an RSS feed, and an API. Try it, use it, re-use it! Continue reading
Google VP for search quality talks about searching
An interesting interview with Udi Manber, vice president in charge of search quality at Google:
- At Google, a search guru's dream comes true, by Stephen Shankland, CNet, June 5, 2008.
The other difference is it depends on location. If you do the same search from a different country, you get different results, even if it's the same language. We will tune the results by the country in which you're searching. It's by language and location.Continue reading
The Federal Government Must Reimagine Its Role As An Information Provider
Here is a pre-print (not-final version) of a paper with fascinating ideas about distribution of government information:
- Robinson, David, Yu, Harlan, Zeller, William P and Felten, Edward W, "Government Data and the Invisible Hand" (2008). Yale Journal of Law & Technology, Vol. 11, 2008.
...reduce the federal role in presenting important government information to citizens. Today, government bodies consider their own websites to be a higher priority than technical infrastructures that open up their data for others to use. We argue that this understanding is a mistake. It would be preferable for government to understand providing reusable data, rather than providing websites, as the core of its online publishing responsibility.While the paper does not address preservation and long term access explicitly, it does suggest that the government should provide a "permanent location" with a permanent URL for "each piece of government data." It also implies (I think) that something like LOCKSS will ensure authenticity and permanent access ("As long as there is vigorous competition between third party sites, we expect most citizens will be able to ?nd a site provider they trust.") I believe that oversimplifies the problem and relies too much on hope and not enough on a social commitment to preservation through public funding of memory organizations. Thanks and a tip of the hat to Joshua Taubere (GovTrack.us) for pointing to this article. He describes and comments on the paper in a post on the Open House Project blog: (Government Data and the Invisible Hand June 6th, 2008 by Joshua Tauberer). Continue reading
Pentagon Posts Documents on its “Military Analysts” Propaganda Program
In April, the New York Times broke a story about the now infamous Pentagon information apparatus that used retired military officers in a "campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance" (Behind Military Analysts, the Pentagon's Hidden Hand By David Barstow, New York Times, April 20, 2008). The Times also published some of the documents it obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests on its web site (NY Times publishes some FOIA documents). Now, the Pentagon has published documents it released. This collection appears more complete than what the NYT released.
- Military Analysts "These documents were released to the New York Times regarding the Pentagon's Military Analyst program." (last updated 28-May-08)
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