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GAO reports on NARA Electronic Records Archive
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has a new report on the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) development of an Electronic Records Archive (ERA) to preserve and provide access to massive volumes and all types of electronic records.
- Electronic Records Archive: National Archives Needs to Strengthen Its Capacity to Use Earned Value Techniques to Manage and Oversee Development GAO-11-86 January 13, 2011. GAO recommends, among other things, that NARA establish a comprehensive plan for all remaining work; improve the accuracy of earned value performance reports; and engage executive leadership in correcting negative trends. NARA generally concurred with GAO's recommendations.
- Costs soaring for Archives' digital library, auditors say, by Lisa Rein, Washington Post (February 4, 2011) The cost of building a digital system to gather, preserve and give the public access to the records of the federal government has ballooned as high as $1.4 billion, and the project could go as much as 41 percent over budget... The Government Accountability Office blames the cost overruns and schedule delays on weak oversight and planning by the National Archives which awarded a $317 million contract to Lockheed Martin Corp. six years ago to create a modern archive for electronic records....
GAO concludes piracy cost estimates are bogus ARRR
ArsTechnica reports today that a new GAO report debunks the many private industry- and govt agency reports on the economic impact estimates of information and industrial "piracy." GAO states that the "lack of data hinders efforts to quantify impacting of counterfeiting and piracy." They go on to highlight in particular 3 reports often linked to the government and commonly cited by industry groups that are bogus.
Three commonly cited estimates of U.S. industry losses due to counterfeiting have been sourced to U.S. agencies, but cannot be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology. First, a number of industry, media, and government publications have cited an FBI estimate that U.S. businesses lose $200-$250 billion to counterfeiting on an annual basis. This estimate was contained in a 2002 FBI press release, but FBI officials told us that it has no record of source data or methodology for generating the estimate and that it cannot be corroborated. Second, a 2002 CBP press release contained an estimate that U.S. businesses and industries lose $200 billion a year in revenue and 750,000 jobs due to counterfeits of merchandise. However, a CBP official stated that these figures are of uncertain origin, have been discredited, and are no longer used by CBP. A March 2009 CBP internal memo was circulated to inform staff not to use the figures. However, another entity within DHS continues to use them. Third, the Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association reported an estimate that the U.S. automotive parts industry has lost $3 billion in sales due to counterfeit goods and attributed the figure to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The OECD has also referenced this estimate in its report on counterfeiting and piracy, citing the association report that is sourced to the FTC. However, when we contacted FTC officials to substantiate the estimate, they were unable to locate any record or source of this estimate within its reports or archives, and officials could not recall the agency ever developing or using this estimate. These estimates attributed to FBI, CBP, and FTC continue to be referenced by various industry and government sources as evidence of the significance of the counterfeiting and piracy problem to the U.S. economy.Read on at: Intellectual Property: Observations on Efforts to Quantify the Economic Effects of Counterfeit and Pirated Goods GAO-10-423 April 12, 2010 [Thanks @ArsTechnica!] Continue reading
GAO has YouTube channel, two Twitter feeds
The official YouTube channel of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO): youtube.com/user/usgao. Twitter feed for: reports and testimony. Twitter feed for: Legal Decisions and Opinions. more: GAO Joins YouTube, Twitter, Congress Daily, "Tech Daily Dose," July 7, 2009. Continue reading
The saga of the GAO legislative histories continues
A few weeks ago, we posted a story about GAO selling exclusive access to GAO legislative histories to Thomson West (see "GAO *did* sell exclusive access to legislative history to Thomson West" and GAO subject for all GAO stories). This was a rich historical chunk of GAO information (20,597 legislative histories of most public laws from 1915-1995!!) and it was set to be locked up with T/W claiming exclusive rights and licensing access. Well, not so fast. Carl Malamud, tireless hero of the public domain, got wind of the deal, and got the GAO to release 10 DVDs of legislative histories, containing 619,481 PDF files -- the pilot project scans they conducted. He has proposed a joint venture with the Internet Archive to scan the same materials with the same terms as Thomson West, give GAO one full copy of all their data AND put up the data online (presumably the Internet Archive) clearly marked as public domain material available for reuse without restriction. And what's more, Carl says, "If they say yes, we intend to ask Congress to earmark funds to pay the Internet Archive to scan this invaluable resource." !! You can follow the paper trail on Carl's Federal Legislative History site. Below is the letter of unsolicited joint venture sent to GAO. Way to go Carl!!
Continue readingGAO *did* sell exclusive access to legislative history to Thomson West
A few weeks ago, Daniel had a great post, "GAO/Thomson-West Contract Raises Questions" in which he expanded on a Boing Boing post "Did the US gov't sell exclusive access to its legislative history to Thomson West?" and analyzed the Thompson-West contract with the GAO for digitizing 20,597 legislative histories of most public laws from 1915-1995. Today, Carl Malamud got an answer to his FOIA request to the GAO seeking access to the digitized images of those legislative histories. I'll let Carl tell it in his own words:
Well, the answer is now a definitive yes, that data has been sold down the river and is out to sea. Public.Resource.Org sent in a FOIA request to GAO on this topic seeking access to the scanned data. Today's letter answering our FOIA request spells out the bad news. Turns out the GAO doesn't even get the data, they simply are given an account on Thomson's service. The rest of the government doesn't get access to this data, and the public is invited to stop by the GAO headquarters and pay 20 cents per page to copy paper. This is one of those deals where the public domain got sold off ... GAO gets a bit of convenience by having their stuff scanned for them, but they gave up way more than they got in the deal, and the public (including government workers and public interest groups who need to consult this data) lost big-time.Carl has put up his paper trail explaining the story. Here's the link to the Scribd group with the full paper trail on this issue, and here's the link to last week's response from the GAO. This perfectly exemplifies the problems we see with government agencies entering into contracts with private companies to digitize public domain materials (see for example "NARA/TGN contract as a bad precedent"). We have no problem with government agencies contracting with private companies to digitize government information. The problem as we see it is that so many agencies seem ignorant of the fact that privatizing access to said digitized public domain information actually limits access in the long run. Continue reading
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