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Why some web pages don’t work
Did you ever wonder why it is that, when you try to load some web pages, the text overlaps the pictures or the pull down boxes will not pull down or the page just appears blank and empty or any of a thousand other problems that made the page un-viewable or un-usable? Did you ever wonder why, when you ask your friends, they say they have no problem at all with those same pages?
Have you ever wondered what this means for users of all those government web sites you have carefully listed in your OPAC? Have you ever wondered if this means that these web sites won't work in 10 years -- or 1 year?
If so, this article is for you. It explains -- in very easy to understand, non-technical terms -- things like "Web Standards" and the differences between web browsers.
- Martian Headsets by Joel Spolsky, Joel on Software, March 17, 2008.
Joel is a software developer and his columns at Joel on Software are models of clear, comprehensive technical writing at its best. You can read and enjoy his columns if you are an advanced technologist/programmer or if you can't tell Java from JavaScript. If you care about the future of government information, or if you develop web pages, or sites, or web-based information, or if you are just curious about what will happen when IE 8 comes out, read this and enjoy.
There is no practical way to check if the web page you just coded conforms to the spec. There are validators, but they won't tell you what the page is supposed to look like, and having a "valid" page where all the text is overlapping and nothing lines up and you can't see anything is not very useful.
and...
Some of those pages can't be changed. They might be burned onto CD-ROMs. Some of them were created by people who are now dead. Most of them created by people who have no frigging idea what's going on and why their web page, which they paid a designer to create 4 years ago, is now not working properly.Continue reading
FGI on the road
Today we start a new feature, FGI on the road. From time to time we'll post upcoming events that FGI volunteers will be attending. We'll be doing this hoping that you'll stop by and say hello so we can meet and talk about government information issues!
Here are places we'll be over the next few months:
- San Francisco Bay Area. Ongoing
Shinjoung Yeo and James R. Jacobs put together monthly public talks and workshops for the Stanford Open Source Lab. Check the Open Source Lab blog for talk announcements. Talks are open to the public. - Urbana-Champaign, IL. April, 2008
Shinjoung and James R will be participating in a brown-bag discussion with graduate students at University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science. - Stanford University. May 27-30, 2008
IASSIST 2008 Conference
The theme of the 2008 meeting of the International Association for Social Science Information Services & Technology (IASSIST), Technology of Data: Collection, Communication, Access and Preservation, examines the role of technology and tools in various aspects of the data life cycle. Shinjoung and James R (local arrangements) and James A. Jacobs will be there. - Anaheim, CA. June 27, 2008.
ALA pre-conference Docs2.0: emerging web technologies for the government documents community. Friday, June 27, 2008, 9:00am – 12:30 (Event Code: GO2)
James A. and James R. will be presenting and will be joining Amy West, Interim Head, Government Publications Library, University of Minnesota (Amy was also an FGI blogger of the month), David Oldenkamp, International Studies Librarian, Indiana University, and John Wonderlich, Program Director, of the Sunlight Foundation. Registration is open, but seating is limited. - Anaheim, CA. June 26–July 2, 2008.
ALA 2008 2008 Annual Conference
Shinjoung and James R and Daniel Cornwall will be there. James R. will be doing a presentation and leading a discussion on digital collection development at GODORT's International documents task force. Daniel is planning a lunch or some other informal get together on the State Agencies Wiki. - Ann Arbor MI. August 11-15
Providing Social Science Data Services: Strategies for Design and Operation
This workshop covers the basics of providing services for social science data. James A. will be joining Diane Geraci, who starts as Associate Director for Information Resources at MIT Libraries in April, and Chuck Humphrey, the Data Library Coordinator at the University of Alberta. This workshop is part of the ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research. Registration is limited to 20.
Federal and State data mashup creates new information
An interactive web service created by federal scientists on the University of Arizona campus in cooperation with the state of Arizona Department of Water Resources with funding from the U.S. Geological Survey "brings formerly hard-to-get water information as close as a mouse click." (UA-based scientists make water data easy to find on Net, by B. Poole, Tucson Citizen, 03.14.2008)
Data for creating and presenting the layers of information on ground-water conditions came from the USGS National Water Information System (NWIS) and the Arizona Department of Water Resources Groundwater Site Inventory). A document describes how the site was created: An Online Interactive Map Service for Displaying Ground-Water Conditions in Arizona, By Fred D Tillman, Stanley A. Leake, Marilyn E. Flynn, Jeffrey T. Cordova, and Kurt T. Schonauer. USGS, National Water Availability and Use Program, Open-File Report 2007-1436, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia 2007.
The Geological Survey map complements Arizona Wells, produced by Sustainability of semi-Arid Hydrology and Riparian Areas (SAHARA), a University of Arizona-based group that aims to foster information exchange. Arizona Wells includes much of the data used in the Geological Survey map and water quality data from the Arizona Department of Water Resources.
One of the reasons we need open, re-usable, downloadable government information is so that sites like these can be built to create new information and to make information that was once hard to use, easier to use. As the Tucson Citizen article says, "Before such interactive maps, the public had to find the data, then interpret the numbers and codes in the databases."
Continue readingLocal FOIA and Open Government
The San Francisco Bay Guardian has a special issue on open government and freedom of information.
- Freedom of Information: Sunshine in the digital age How technology can vastly improve public access to government, San Francisco Bay Guardian (March 12, 2008)
It begins this way:
"On one front, the advocates of secrecy are pushing hard to keep electronic data under strict controls. The state Legislature is considering a bill that would prohibit the release of electronic data embedded in a public record. The county of Santa Clara tried to set a $100,000 price on access to a public database. But on the other hand, sunshine advocates are pushing for ways to use the same technology to make government more open.
The special issue includes articles on "A citizen's guide to fighting secret government"; "Virtual meetings"; a "Sunshine experiment in Palo Alto" (Posting e-mails from council members on the city's Web site); and more. Of particular interest are these two:
- More sunshine -- easily and at no cost, Technology can allow the city to take a huge step forward in public access -- right now. By Kimo Crossman, San Francisco Bay Guardian (March 12, 2008)
- Battleship metadata, Legislation on mapping software would create an expensive new category of public records. By Sarah Phelan, San Francisco Bay Guardian (March 12, 2008)
Crossman notes:
...video recordings of city meetings can't be downloaded -- the only way to review it or post a clip to YouTube is to order a $10 DVD, which arrives a week after you send a check (and no, they don't take PayPal). And while many other city meetings make audio recordings, you have to pay $1 for an audio tape and pick it up during business hours or pay more for postage. They all should be available as free podcasts. ...In fact, we all know storage continues to get cheaper and smaller -- so San Francisco should abolish any retention timeframes for electronic records and keep them all into the foreseeable future. The world-famous Internet Archive is right here in the Presidio: I suspect that group would love to archive all the city information, and keep it online, free and forever.Continue reading
Pentagon will mail you a copy of Iraq study that finds no smoking gun
ABC News is reporting that the Pentagon canceled plans to post a new comprehensive military study of Saddam Hussein's links to terrorism on the website of the Joint Forces Command. The story says, "The report will be made available only to those who ask for it, and it will be sent via U.S. mail from Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. It won't be emailed to reporters and it won't be posted online." The Pentagon also canceled plans to send out a press release announcing the report's release.
- Pentagon Report on Saddam's Iraq Censored?, ABC News: Rapid Report March 12, 2008.
- Report Shows No Link Between Saddam and al Qaeda, ABC News: Rapid Report, March 13, 2008.
The report was prepared by Kevin M. Woods and James Lacey "under the Iraqi Perspectives sub task of the Joint Advanced Warfighting Program (JAWP) task order for the Director, Joint Center for Operational Analyses and Lessons Learned, United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM)" and the Institute For Defense Analyses. It is based on the analysis of some 600,000 official Iraqi documents seized by US forces after the invasion and on thousands of hours of interrogations of former top officials in Saddam's government in U.S. custody.
The executive summary of the report says
This study found no "smoking gun" (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda. Saddam's interest in, and support for, non-state actors was spread across a variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist, and Islamic terrorist organizations.
The ABC report says that when asked why the report would not be posted online and could not be emailed a Pentagon official said initial press reports on the study made it "too politically sensitive."
ABC has posted a copy of an executive summary of the document here:
- Iraqi Perspectives Report Saddam And Terrorism: Emerging Insights From Captured Iraqi Documents Volume 1 (Redacted) January 2007. IDA Paper P-4287. (9 pages, 3.4 Meg PDF) [another copy is available at www.webcitation.org/5WJZa7Cuc]
ABC also has a copy of a longer version of what is apparently the same report here:
- Iraqi Perspectives Project Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents Volume 1 (Redacted) "This volume is a redacted version of Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents, Volume I (IDA Paper P-4151). November 2007 Approved for public release; distribution unlimited. IDA Paper P-4287 Log: H 07-001575 ( 94 page, 11.7 Megs, PDF) [another copy is available at www.webcitation.org/5WJaXglxS]
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