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Congressional Transparency, Past and Present
There are a few transparency bills that are up for debate in Congress today: The Presidential Records Act and The Presidential Library Donation Reform Act. The Sunlight Blog has a good write-up summarizing the importance of these two bills, as well as a post by Ellen Miller. I just checked GovTrack.org and here are the House votes results: On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass: H R 35 Presidential Records Act Amendments On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass: H R 36 Presidential Library Donation Reform Act If you are interested in learning more about the history of Congressional transparency reform, checkout Sunlight.org's project, The Transparency Timeline. Continue reading
Lunchtime listen: “Tech Agenda 2009: Open Government”
Thanks to Amy West's tweet for the heads-up about this video, "Tech Agenda 2009: Open Government." John Wonderlich turns a nice phrase (@ 3:10) in response to the question about defining what is open government. John says, "the Federal Depository Library Program is like the internet of the '40s and '50s." Check this one out while nibbling on your cheese (yes that's for you Rebecca :-) ).
This is the second in a series of town halls, "Tech Agenda 2009: Creating New Opportunities for Open & Participatory Government" focused on how technology can help government become more accountable, transparent and participatory. Panelists for Panel II, "Changing Policy to Promote Open Government," include Chris Barkley, Meredith Fuchs, Karina Newton, and John Wonderlich. The discussion was moderated by Andrew McLaughlin of Google. This event took place on December 12, 2008 at Google's offices in Washington, D.C.
Malamud’s radical plan to “open source America’s operating system”
Carl Malamud is at it again, this time shaking things up with the Obama transition team over at change.gov. He's submitted a letter to the "Department of Transparency" with 5 proposals for making government information more accessible to the public, thereby making government processes and workings more transparent. His proposals can be boiled down to: 1) make GPO "products" like the Congressional Record, Federal Register, US Code, etc immediately available online in bulk and with historical coverage; 2) create a .gov cloud; 3) wire for video all US Government hearing rooms; 4) train people in the art of both traditional and digital publishing and 5) get rural America access to broadband aka "internetification." That takes care of the creation of and access to digital government information -- the bulk of the issues with which FGI is concerned. There's just one piece missing in Malamud's ingenious plan: preservation. The Library of the USA needs to include actual libraries in the process. I'm not faulting the plan, because I really think it's far-reaching and radically elegant in its simplicity -- not to mention that malamud's M.O. has always been about access, "open sourcing America's operating system." And since the Obama transition team is increasingly talking about a "21st century New Deal" that includes a call for a huge job training program combined with an agenda of ethical and transparent government, this is a plan with real legs. For the plan to work though, libraries and librarians will need to step up to the challenge. We'll need to work closely with GPO and each other and collaborate on the building of digital infrastructures. Stay tuned. This is getting interesting!
The Honorable Office of the President-Elect Attn: Department of Transparency Washington, D.C. 20270 Sirs: Pre the procedures and policies propounded by the Office of the President-Elect, Public.Resource.Org is pleased to provide for publication and posting the following policy papers and proposals which we have previously shared with your staff: REBOOTING .GOV. How the Government Printing Office can spearhead a revolution in governmental affairs. FEDFLIX. Government videos are an essential national resource for vocational and safety training and can also help form a public domain stock footage library, a common resource for the YouTube and remix era. THE LIBRARY OF THE U.S.A. A book series and public works job program to create an archival series of curated documents drawn from our cultural institutions, with full-quality masters of the books and research materials made available for other publishers to draw on. The program would employ the GPO master printers and would recruit writers, archivists, artists, and other creative workers through a national call for participation. THE UNITED STATES PUBLISHING ACADEMY. GPO should expand current training programs such as the Institute for Federal Printing and combine them with current workforce development efforts to create a national academy similar to the National Mine Academy and the National Fire Academy, training its own workforce, the government, and the local schools in the art, craft, and science of publishing. THE RURAL INTERNETIFICATION ADMINISTRATION. Repurposing the Amateur Radio League, modifying spectrum policy, and injecting capital into rural coops can bring high-speed broadband to 98% of rural Americans just as the Rural Electrification Administration did in the last century. All submissions are in the public domain and you may feel free to remix or mashup the ideas as you so wish. Respectfully yours, Carl Malamud President & CEO Public.Resource.Org[Thanks for the tweet John Wonderlich!] Continue reading
46 and 45 Days to Government Information Liberation
1. Recognize the importance of librarians and their institutions in the sustainability of a dynamic civic culture. I think the toughest aspect of sustaining this kind of weeks long conversation is to try and keep all the different aspects of what we now call government information librarianship together into some kind of cohesive whole. In my last post I spoke about the underlying foundations of social capital shared by journalists and librarians that mediates between individuals or communities that want to know more about government institutions and sources of information produced by and about those institutions. In the case of librarians, the cumulative social capital comes from centuries old traditions of gathering and organizing a community's information artifacts. As an outcome of this gathering and organizing, librarians might also choose to become familiar with the substance and dynamics of how government organizations function, study or address problems, communicate with the public (and other government organizations), and eventually how the government organization might stash its information stuff over the long haul (or not, as the case might be.) In an open and democratic society these librarians also take on the express purpose to proactively work with other organizations, groups, and interested individuals to keep the civic machinery of government as transparent and accessible as possible. The term civic machinery is not widely used in the library traditions, but is a term that constantly pops in the professional and popular press. example, see here, here, here and here. I like the phrase "civic machinery" -- once used by Jane Addams to describe the critical role certain institutions might play in connecting a community to the democratic structures of their governments. Here is what Addams said specifically -- "As the policeman who makes terms with vice, and almost inevitably slides into making gain from vice, merely represents the type of politician who is living off the weakness of his fellows, so the over-zealous reformer who exaggerates vice until the public is scared and awestruck, represents the type of politician who is living off the timidity of his fellows. With the lack of civic machinery for simple democratic expression, for a direct dealing with human nature as it is, we seem doomed to one type or the other--corruptionists or anti-crime committees" What the civic expansion of public digital information over the last 15 years now demands of librarians and their professional associations is simply this -- take advantage of the technology to preserve our traditions of sustainability and transparency. See you on Day 44. Continue reading
The Transition: Information, Technology, and Information-Technology
There is a lot going on during the current transition to a new Administration with regard to information policy, technology policy, and information-technology (IT) policy. Sometimes these overlap, but not always. I wanted to take this opportunity to bring together some resources relevant to government information and technology policies during this transition period. John Shuler has begun some comments here on FGI, which I hope will spark comments and discussion.
The Environmental Protection Agency has had an ongoing National Dialogue on Access to Environmental Information since April, and they have issued a draft report:- Draft Information Access Strategy (PDF) (22pp, 682K)
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