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New paper on reclaiming scrubbed information
Let the People Know the Facts: Can Government Information Removed from the Internet be Reclaimed? by Susan Nevelow Mart, University of California, Hastings College of the Law: June 13, 2005.
This article will discuss the bases of the public’s right to government information, the types of government information that have been removed from the Internet, whether the rationale, if any, given for the removal was appropriate, and the possibilities for returning the information to the Internet.Includes a section on using FOIA for "Recovering Electronic Content Once It Has Been Removed From Agency Websites." Continue reading
CRS reports for the people
The Center for Democracy and Technology has started a new Web site, OpenCRS, that aims to make Congressional Research Service Reports more available.
American taxpayers spend nearly $100 million a year to fund the Congressional Research Service, a "think tank" that provides reports to members of Congress on a variety of topics relevant to current political events. Yet, these reports are not made available to the public in a way that they can be easily obtained. A project of the Center for Democracy & Technology through the cooperation of several organizations and collectors of CRS Reports, Open CRS provides citizens access to CRS Reports already in the public domain and encourages Congress to provide public access to all CRS Reports.The site further notes that, "Unfortunately, there is no systematic way to obtain all CRS reports. Because of this, not all reports appear on the Open CRS web site. CDT beleives that it would be far preferable for Congress to make available to the public all CRS Reports." Continue reading
Access to digital government information in the UK
As part of a the British Economic and Social Research Council's "Social Science Week," the UK Social Science Information Gateway is sponsoring a forum of invited papers called Social Sciences Online: Past, Present and Future to look at how the Internet is changing the face of social science research. One paper that will be of interest to government information specialists in this country is e-Government Information: the same old problem ... newly digitized! by Alastair J. Allan, University of Sheffield. While focusing on the UK, many of his observations are relevant here in the U.S. as well. He looks at barriers to access in the digital age. Among his findings:
The need to maintain full and accessible archives is becoming even more of a problem than it was twenty years ago. Once the archiving function was taken care of by the large national and university libraries but now the individual sites have to ensure that the archives are maintained and, frankly, many sites lack both the ability and ambition to do so.Continue reading
Government investigates libraries
If digital government information is only available to the public through government-controlled web servers, will the government examine what people are reading? A recent study by the American Library Association may have some bearing on this question. As reported by the NY Times, law enforcement officials "made at least 200 formal and informal inquiries to libraries for information on reading material and other internal matters since October 2001." This raises the question: If the government is willing to examine what people read when it is difficult for them to do so, what will constrain them doing so when it is much easier to examine their own logs of web usage? Libraries Say Yes, Officials Do Quiz Them About Users. By Eric Lichtblau, New York Times June 20, 2005 Monday Late Edition - Final, Section A; Column 5; National Desk; Pg. 11. Also available here: U.S. libraries say agents are prying. By Eric Lichtblau, The New York Times International Herald Tribune, Tuesday, JUNE 21, 2005. Continue reading
Preservation is more than backup
June 26, 2005 / Leave a comment
This is an interesting article about digital preservation. The Fading Memory of the State By David Talbot. Technology Review (July 2005) It opens with a story about FBI director J. Edgar Hoover writing a memo in 1972 to an aide about a young historian suing for the release of old FBI files and asking "What do we know about Weinstein?" That's Allen Weinstein, who has just taken over as Archivist of the United States. This article continues, "It was a telling note about the mind-set of the FBI director and of the federal bureaucracy of that era. And it was saved--Weinstein later found the clipping in his own FBI file. But it's doubtful such a record would be preserved today, because it would likely be 'born digital' and follow a convoluted electronic path." The article describes the new nature of government information. Definitely worth reading! Continue reading →
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