2006 Federal Information Security Management Act reports
More troubling news... Government Receives a C-Minus on Information Security Efforts Continue reading
White House e-mails
Waxman: Save all e-mails from or to the White House Rep. Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has asked several federal agencies to step up their efforts to save e-mails they send to, or receive from, White House officials through nongovernmental e-mail accounts. The Committee's request is a response to a recent announcement by the Office of the White House Counsel and the Republican National Committee (RNC) that the RNC may have destroyed a large quantity of White House e-mails, beginning as early as 2001. In light of the speculation surrounding the U.S. Attorney firings, it is mind-numbing to think about the sheer volume of erased messages providing potentially valuable information related to this and other such events during the Bush administration. And what about the RNC's policy to allow White House officials to delete their own e-mails from the RNC server? Each official would probably have a different idea of what constituted an important public record and what constituted spam or simply e-mail that he or she didn't want to become public knowledge. Such arbitrary handling of public records is not only suspect during the current scandal, but it also goes against Americans' "right to know" about their government's activities, whether altruistic or detrimental. Continue reading
NARA films from Google
Google Video: NARA Google Video offers films from the National Archives & Records Administration. Featured films include: NASA History of Space Flight Motion Pictures, 1962-1981 United Newsreel Motion Pictures, 1942-1945 WWII war theatres and homefront newsreels Department of the Interior parks, public lands and Native American lands Continue reading
Lack of collaboration among DHS watch centers
The Department of Homeland Security has 25 operations centers throughout the U.S., and according to a recent GAO audit, they're not collaborating very well. Here's the full story: GAO faults DHS for poor management of watch centers According to the report, DHS doesn't have a clear set of procedures in place for the operation of its Homeland Security Information Network, which in turn hampers the operations centers' ability to share information related to terrorist threats and the like. As we saw after 9/11, the lack of coordination between the FBI and CIA put the nation at risk. Obviously, there has to be better cooperation among these 25 centers in order to avoid a similar situation. The same goes for information-sharing prior to, during, and following a natural disaster or other catastrophe. It's alarming that "basics" like information-sharing policies and procedures are either non-existent or poorly defined at both the regional and national levels, especially given that more complex and technical processes are needed to keep the citizenry safe. Continue reading
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