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Free Government Information (FGI) is a place for initiating dialogue and building consensus among the various players (libraries, government agencies, non-profit organizations, researchers, journalists, etc.) who have a stake in the preservation of and perpetual free access to government information. FGI promotes free government information through collaboration, education, advocacy and research.

Congressional Research Service (CRS) releases report on Congressionally Mandated Reports

Wow, the FirstBranchForecast was on fire this week (as it is most weeks!), announcing a new bill to protect Inspectors General, talking about the just-released FOIA Advisory Committee’s draft report available for public comment (submit yours via email to foia-advisory-committee@nara.gov through June 2), and also highlighting a new CRS report Congressionally Mandated Reports: Overview and […]

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With Inspectors General firings in the news, Congress introduces bill to protect them

Inspectors General are a little known unit within many federal agencies. They were set up in the 1970s to “identify waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government.” Their reports can be found on Oversight.gov as well as the non-governmental website Oversight.garden (there is some duplication between the sites, but the garden also posts some […]

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Mapping the Trump administration’s corruption across the executive branch

One of the things that most scares me about the current administration is the terrible — and possibly long-term — erosive effect it is having on the entire executive branch. One of the best books to document this systemic tragedy is Michael Lewis’ Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy (many libraries have access to it via Overdrive […]

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The Evolution of the Decennial Census

The classic publication to learn about the history of the US Census and trace the questions asked through time is Measuring America: The Decennial Censuses From 1790 to 2000. I refer to this frequently when teaching students about the census. But check out this incredibly handy visual look at the history of the US census […]

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FGI Doc of the day: NSC’s pandemic playbook plus 4 other pandemic preparedness documents

Today’s document of the day is actually a super trifecta of documents all having to do with COVID-19 and the US government’s preparedness (or lack thereof). It started out with a document cited in this Politico news story: Trump team failed to follow NSC’s pandemic playbook. Politico cited and included a copy of the National […]

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