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National Archives to Host Sunshine Week Panel on Artificial Intelligence and Government Access
Sunshine Week (March 10-16, 2024) and Freedom of Information Day (March 16, 2024) are coming up fast. Sunshine Week is a nonpartisan collaboration among groups in the journalism, civic, education, government and private sectors that shines a light on the importance of public records and open government. Besides all of the regular events that are happening this year, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is going to host a Panel on Artificial Intelligence and Government Access. This panel of really interesting speakers will be Thursday, March 14, at 1 p.m. ET. in person at the William G. McGowan Theater at the National Archives in Washington, DC, and livestreamed on the National Archives YouTube Channel. Hope you can make it or tune in online.
And don’t forget to check out all the Sunshine week events and cool Sunshine toolkit.
RIP Russ Kick, “rogue transparency activist”
It is with much shock and sadness that I learned a few days ago that Russ Kick (1969 – 2021) had passed away. Russ was a FOIA champion and government transparency activist among his many other talents. While I didn’t know him personally, I had on occasion emailed with him and worked with groups working on FOIA and records schedule issues that included him (he was dogged in tracking and pursuing records destruction requests from federal agencies!) I frequently mined his altgov2 site and the memory hole before that looking for FOIA’d government documents to save in our digital repository and catalog for wider access. Needless to say — though he probably didn’t know it — Russ had a HUGE impact on me, on government information libraries, and on FOIA and the public’s right to know about the workings of their government. Please check out Seven Stories Press and Washington Post for more official obituaries.
- Remembering Russ Kick (1969 – 2021) by Seven Stories Press
- Russ Kick, writer, editor and ‘rogue transparency activist,’ dies at 52. Harrison Smith, Washington Post, September 26, 2021.
Molly Crabapple, comics artist and colleague of Russ Kick, put Russ’ impact on the world into unique perspective:
I first found Russ Kick when I was thirteen, through his book Outposts. For a friendless goth kid like me, Kick was the exact sort of guide I needed. Like a punk-rock Virgil, Russ’s work led countless young people like me to the exact sort of places that America tried to hide—to the dangerous, thrilling, strange, ludicrous and beautiful realms where we imagined we could belong. I was an immediate devotee; his formative bad influence helped shape my own artistic path. With his Disinformation series, Russ challenged power. He peeled the censored bars off of redacted documents, and kicked down the doors of the pompous and mendacious, to reveal their skulduggery to the world. His work was transgressive, subversive, and irreverent of piety—all qualities in short supply today. Russ Kick showed the possibilities of life. Many years later, I was lucky enough to have Russ as an editor on The Graphic Canon. Never meet your idols, they say, particularly the ones of the gonzo variety, but in Russ’s case, this would have been bad advice. He was unfailingly kind, supportive, generous and perceptive. I cannot fathom the loss of such a man, but the world is made more narrow by his absence.
Help us celebrate Sunshine Week!
This week is Sunshine Week hosted by the News Leaders Association! Begun in 2005 to highlight and promote open government, FOIA and access to government information (well that’s how we here at FGI celebrate it 😉 ), you can track on what’s happening this week on the Sunshine Week twitter account, share your own Sunshine Week happenings at #sunshineweek, and also check out the information in Sunshine Week toolkit for how to get involved, interesting events, inspiration and resources for teachers, librarians, journalists, and school, civic or non-profit organizations.
HOW TO GET INVOLVED:
Publish Sunshine Week content toolkit: Major news organizations work together on a special reporting package free for anyone to publish in print or online during Sunshine Week, made available at the start of the week’s events. Find this year’s offerings under Content Toolkit.
Share your stories: Sunshine Week celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2020, and we’ve made a lot of gains in open government thanks to your work. Please share your experiences, success stories, FOIA battles, new laws and other efforts on behalf of open government. Tweet to us @SunshineWeek or use #SunshineWeek to share.
Join us March 18: In partnership with First Amendment Coalition, we’re hosting a discussion on navigating barriers to public records and fighting for open government. Make sure to register here.
If you are in the world of journalism, you can highlight the importance of openness through stories, editorials, columns, cartoons or graphics.
If you are part of a civic group, you can organize local forums, sponsor essay contests or press elected officials to pass proclamations on the importance of open access.
If you are an educator, you can use Sunshine Week to teach your students about how government transparency improves our lives and makes our communities stronger.
If you are an elected official, you can pass a resolution supporting openness, introduce legislation improving public access or encourage training of government employees to ensure compliance with existing laws mandating open records and meetings.
If you are a private citizen, you can write a letter to the editor or spread the word to friends through social media.
Reclaim the Records “mother-of-all-FOIA requests” and NARA’s new digitization partnership site
An activist group called Reclaim the Records recently submitted the “mother-of-all-FOIA requests” asking for billions of pages scanned through NARA’s public-private digitization partnership program. Here’s the twitter thread describing it:
Hey! @USNatArchives just did something new, and really good for transparency!
And we think it maybe *might* be because of that "mother-of-all-FOIA requests" we just filed with them. 😌
So, okay, remember how we filed this on October 14th? Well…
1/https://t.co/zkhudYswJy— Reclaim The Records (@ReclaimTheRecs) November 19, 2020
Well now at least NARA has put up a page showing all of their digitization partners and what publications/record groups these organizations are scanning. It looks mostly to be ancestry, fold3 and familysearch, but there are other groups like the National Archives of Korea, National Collection of Aerial Photography (UK), and NOAA (Logbooks from 19th century naval ships and expeditions!).
From what I can tell, these scans seem to be going into NARA’s catalog and are freely available! Thanks NARA and also BIG thanks Reclaim the Records for making a big public deal about NARA’s public-private partnership program and making sure that the public is aware of those BILLIONS of scanned pages.
Political Interference in CDC’s MMWR Report
Politico obtained government emails that a Trump political appointee instructed the CDC to alter a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) pertaining to schools holding in-person classes.
The report in question was “SARS-CoV-2–Associated Deaths Among Persons Aged <21 Years — United States, February 12–July 31, 2020”
The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) issued an editorial on the importance protecting CDC independence as did the Scientific American.
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