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USPTO latest agency looking to outsource their data
[UPDATE: Michael Keller, University Librarian at Stanford University (and my boss), wrote a letter to USPTO as well. Thanks Carl for posting it to scribd.] Carl Malamud made me aware (see his letter to USPTO CIO John Owens below) of a posting on FedBizOpps of a Request for Information (RFI) from the US Patent and Trademark Office:
"This RFI seeks to obtain information from interested parties, including the vendor community, about potential opportunities to acquire patent and trademark data in bulk (my emphasis) and to provide such data to the public without cost. The USPTO is seeking comments on the identified problem and solutions that will make the data available to the public without charge."While there is mention in the RFI of IP data being easily accessible to the public, there's no mention of data.gov. This seems to be purely a "no-cost" way for USPTO to upgrade their IT infrastructure by giving away public domain information. This is worrisome on so many levels as it is just one more example of a government agency looking to outsource and privatize public domain information *and* its IT infrastructure -- see for example the Thomson West contract with the GAO to digitize their legislative histories. Additionally, in a vague nod to transparency, USPTO will be holding 1 (yes only 1) vendor information meeting on Sept 24. I'm not sure how USPTO thinks that a 2 week notice for a meeting held in DC will help the cause of transparency. Shouldn't they have several meetings in different geographic locations to talk about such a huge and important public resource (nearly 2 petabytes of data!!)? Luckily, this is only at the RFI stage, not RFP stage. USPTO is currently only looking for information on how to do this. This is the time for the government information/transparency communities to submit ideas for how the USPTO could make their patent information available *without* giving it away to vendors. Please contact the USPTO at the addresses below and give them ideas for making their data open, standardized and freely available in bulk. Public Meeting:
Thursday, 24 September 2009
9:00 a.m. -11:00 a.m.
USPTO Campus in the Madison Auditorium
600 Dulany Street
Alexandria, VA, 22314 Contracting Office Address:
P. O. Box 1450 - Mail Stop 6
600 Dulany Street, MDE, 7th Floor
Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450 Primary Point of Contact.:
publicdatadissemination@uspto.gov
Secondary Point of Contact:
V. Anne Tugbang,
Contracting Officer
vanne.tugbang@uspto.gov
Phone: 5712726550
Fax: 5712736550
Voting records expunged in California
In California, Legislative votes on bills are posted on the web (http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/bilinfo.html). In fact, a bill cannot become a law without an official record of the vote. But it is possible to "expunge" votes and the L.A. Times reports that happened recently on a controversial bill.
- California Assembly expunges votes on oil drilling bill, By Patrick McGreevy, Los Angeles Times, August 6, 2009.
Although 28 members of the California Assembly supported a measure to allow new oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast, their votes are nowhere to be found in the official state database.According to the status page for the Assembly Bill "ABX4 23," on July 24, action was rescinded and the "record expunged whereby a final roll call vote was taken" but no record of the House vote exists on the web site today. Offshore oil drilling is very controversial in California and both private contractors and the State hoped to reap a lot of money from the drilling. (Plains Exploration Falls On Tranquillon Ridge Rejection >PXP, By Aja Carmichael, Wall Street Journal, JULY 27, 2009). While voting records are often mis-used, in my opinion, in political contests -- taking votes out of context and viewing them as isolated and simple when they are, in fact, part of a process of conflict, compromise, and (one hopes) consensus -- removing records from the public record is hard to justify on any grounds. The usual excuses were used for this recent expunging: It doesn't happen often; and: Another vote will be taken later on the same or a different bill; and: You can still find the information somewhere else. These are excuses and not reasons and they are not even very good reasons. This is nothing but an attempt to control political information. As one Republican, who wrote the measure, said: "The message to the public is 'this vote was an inconvenient vote and we would rather you not look at the man behind the curtain.'" Continue reading
Less Access to Less Information By and About the U.S. Government
[UPDATE 3/25/10: Thanks to Bernadine Abbott Hoduski for sending me 1997-98 volumes, the complete chronology from 1981 - 98 is now digitized and hosted at the Internet Archive!] From 1981 until 1998, Anne Heanue and the fine folks at the Washington Office of the American Library Association (ALA) published an amazing series called Less Access to Less Information by and about the U.S. Government, a chronology of efforts to restrict and privatize government information. In 1986, the publication was listed in Project Censored's annual review, Top 25 censored stories for 1986. I recently had a nice email exchange with Emily Sheketoff, Associate Executive Director of ALA and manager of the Washington Office in which I suggested that Less Access to Less Information ought to be online for the world to see, read, share etc. Emily graciously gave me permission to digitize the series. So, with the help of Rick and Megan Prelinger, Robert Miller and others at the Internet Archive, I give you Less Access to Less information by and about the U.S. government in several formats including text, flip book, PDF, and DjVu.
- 1981-1987 chronology
- 1988-1991 chronology
- 1990-1996 chronology
- 1997 chronology: January – June
- 1997 chronology: June – December
- 1998 chronology: january – June
- 1998 chronology: June – December
DOD withdraws embarrassing report
The Defense Department has withdrawn from its web site a report that had exonerated it from using retired generals for propaganda.
- Inspector at Pentagon Says Report Was Flawed, By David Barstow, New York Times, May 5, 2009.
In a highly unusual reversal, the Defense Department’s inspector general’s office has withdrawn a report it issued in January exonerating a Pentagon public relations program that made extensive use of retired officers who worked as military analysts for television and radio networks. ...In addition to repudiating its own report, the inspector general’s office took the additional step of removing the report from its Web site.The DOD memo withdrawing the report:
- Withdrawal Memo for IE-2009-004 "Examination of Allegations Involving DoD Public Affairs Outreach Program" (.pdf 262 kb), Memo from Donald M. Horstman, Deputy Inspector General for Policy and Oversight, Inspector General Department Of Defense, "Subject: Inspector General of the Department of Defense Report No. IE-2009-004, "Examination of Allegations Involving DoD Office of Public Affairs Outreach Program," January 14,2009" (05/05/09).
- New York Times Reporter David Barstow Wins Pulitzer Prize for Exposing Military’s Pro-War Propaganda Media Campaign, Democracy Now!, May 08, 2009.
Air Force Blocking the Military’s Own Video Site
Air Force Blocking the Military's Own Video Site By Noah Shachtman, Wired, March 27, 2009. trooptube.tv is the "online video site designed to help military families connect and keep in touch while miles apart" maintained by "Military OneSource" which is an authorized Department of Defense program for Active Duty, Guard, Reserve and their families. As Wired describes it, trooptube is the "military's taxpayer-funded, security-scrubbed, low-bandwidth-optimized video sharing site." But now, Wired says that military bases, especially Air Force bases, are blocking TroopTube as part of a larger, Air Force-wide decision to cut off access to it. This isn't the first time the military has sent mixed signals. See Pentagon promotes itself on YouTube, but prohibits troops from using it. Continue reading
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