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Video Blackout of Hearing on Budgets of GPO, LoC, GAO, CBO
The hearing on Tuesday (Feb 7, 2012) on budgets for the Library of Congress, the Government Printing Office, the Government Accountability Office, and the Congressional Budget Office is not expected to be webcast by the committee.
- Video Blackout of Hearing on Budgets for Legislative Support Agencies, Daniel Schuman, Sunglight Foundation (Feb. 5, 2012). Only the House and Senate Legislative Appropriations Committees regularly hold annual public hearings on the workings of these agencies; the oversight committees (Committee on House Administration and Senate Rules) generally do not, and the Joint Committee on the Library and Joint Committee on Printing no longer holds substantive meetings in public. The new House rules require that all committees provide "audio and video coverage of each hearing or meeting" that "allows the public to easily listen ... and view the proceedings" "to the maximum extent practicable." All of the House committees have at least one hearing room that is equipped with a camera, and the House Recording Studio will provide a camera upon a committee's request. Unfortunately, this hearing is being held in a room without a camera, and I've been informed that the Committee has not requested one.
Congress Nixes Climate Service
Congress Nixes Climate Service, By Curtis Brainard, Columbia Journalism Review (Nov 21, 2011).
NOAA's budget request for fiscal year 2012 (which began October 1) included a proposal to reorganize its existing climate capabilities and services into "a single point of entry" for users called the Climate Service. The stated goal was to "more efficiently and effectively respond to the rapidly increasing demand for easily accessible and timely scientific data and information about climate that helps people make informed decisions in their lives, businesses, and communities." Despite the fact that the proposal did not call for any additional funding to establish the new office, Republican lawmakers opposed it every step of the way, according to the Post's Brian Vastag, who was seemingly the only reporter to spot Congress's decision to scuttle the Climate Service during budget negotiations last week.Continue reading
Economic Census at Risk
Congress is proposing cuts to the Census Bureau budget that would result in cancelling the next economic census.
- Census Confronts Budget Ax, By Ben Casselman, Wall Street Journal, (October 31, 2011). Economists warned that cutting the measure would rob policy makers of crucial information. "If you're trying to figure out what policy measures America should be taking right now to promote job growth for families and workers, without data sets like the 2012 economic census it's going to be a lot harder to do," said Matthew Slaughter, a professor at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business and a former member of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. ...Conducted in various forms since the early 19th century, the economic census surveys roughly five million American businesses about their revenue, expenses, number and type of workers, and other information. The census data provide the framework for a swath of other economic measures, from inflation to industrial production to the gross domestic product, that are based on monthly or quarterly surveys. Because those surveys are far smaller than the Economic Census, they become less accurate over time unless recalibrated based on new census data.
- Census Chiefs: Cuts Will Leave Nation Flying Blind In Bad Economy, by Michael McAuliff, Huffington Post, (Oct. 27, 2011). Six of the last seven directors of the U.S. Census Bureau fear proposed cuts to the bureau's budget will blind the nation's financial experts. They're urging congressional leaders to reconsider reductions that could end the gathering of crucial economic data for the first time in 200 years.
President Obama: there are too many .gov Web sites
Evidently, sharing government information with the public is "wasteful." While I'm all for spending tax dollars responsibly, and don't want the federal govt to waste dollars on superfluous and wasteful things (like $3 billion for duplicative engines for the F-35 fighter jet), I would prefer if he didn't use the printing of the Federal Register as an example of govt waste. As we noted in our earlier post:
Public Printer Bill Boarman, in a Mar. 17, 2011 Senate Appropriations hearing for the Government Printing Office, stated that 70% of the cost and work of publishing the Congressional Record is done in pre-press, and many of the same duties necessary to publish it in print are still necessary to put it out digitally.While it is true that many more people these days access government information (including the Federal Register) in digital format, there is still a need for print from both a usability and preservation standpoint. Gary Price points out some of the incongruities with the White House's line of reasoning regarding .gov domain:
More from the White House blog post:Our point here is not to say that what’s being discussed is 100% wrong but rather if considerations about many issues (several noted above) are in place about how to proceed going forward?
- Top-level web domains are one thing but in saying that there are t0o many subsites/microsites is another. What does this mean? Are we talking sub-sites inside a focused site like this mentioned at the beginning of the blog post OR sub-sites on any web domain?
- What exactly is a sub-site? A focused area of a large site, often beginning with the name or a subdirectory or all sites that begin with something other than the top-level domain? Is Chronicling America a sub-site at Chronicling.loc.gov? What about Travel.state.gov or Jobs.Faa.gov?
- The White House should know that sub-sites (no matter the definition) CAN be a useful way to organize a lot of focused information and then have an easy URL to share with others and market the content. Yes, of course, it’s also possible to go overboard but have info organization and info architecture been considered?
- If old sites are to be taken offline have they been archived properly and are URLs going to be redirected to where the material is being archived? What does the White House have to say about the long term preservation of government web sites and making it easy for researchers to access? NARA does conduct web harvests (using Internet Archive technology). Are the harvests large enough? Are they being promoted properly? Learn more about the harvests at: http://www.webharvest.gov (is this top-level domain necessary? (-:
As the President points out in this video, our government doesn’t need a website dedicated to foresters who play the fiddle. We also don’t need multiple sites dealing with invasive plants (here and here). And I‘m pretty sure the website dedicated to the Centennial of Flight can come down… particularly since the Centennial was in 2003. Today, there are nearly 2,000 top-level federal .gov domains (this means a top-level url, [WEBSITENAME].gov, that links to a distinct website). This includes WhiteHouse.gov, as well as others like USDA.gov, USASpending.gov, NOAA.gov and USA.gov. Under many of these domains are smaller sub-sites and microsites resulting in an estimated 24,000 websites of varying purpose, design, navigation, usability, and accessibility. While many government websites each deliver value to the taxpayer through easy-to-use services and information, an overall online landscape of literally thousands of websites – each focusing on a specific topic or organization – can create confusion and inefficiency. In addition to confusing the public, duplicate and unnecessary websites also waste money. And while the costs for some of these websites may be relatively small, as President Obama also said in the video, ”No amount of waste is acceptable. Not when it’s your money, not at a time when so many families are already cutting back.” So the federal government will do more with less, improving how it delivers information and services to the public by reducing the number of websites it maintains. To help drive this change we’ve set a specific goal that over the next year, we’ll get rid of at least half of them.Watch the video in which President Obama talks about his campaign to cut waste:
Budget woes at GPO: GPO to offer employees buyouts/early outs
According to a press release this morning (PDF), GPO management will soon be reducing their personnel by 15% (a reduction of 330 positions out of 2,200) including a reduction of 25% in management and supervisory levels. This is one more grim announcement on top of drastic budget cuts to govt information services and govt transparency efforts across the federal government. Stay tuned for more as we learn more about these reductions.
In response to overall Government cutbacks and projected reductions in appropriated funding, the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) informed employees today of its plan to send a request to Congress and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for authority to offer buyouts and early outs to the agency’s 2,200 employees. GPO’s goal is to achieve a personnel reduction of 15% (or 330 positions), including a reduction in management and supervisory levels of 25%. Once GPO is given authority, employees can be offered lump-sum payments up to $25,000 as an incentive to voluntarily separate from the agency. The actual amount of the payout is based on a formula. GPO will use current funds to conduct this program, which needs to be concluded by the end of the first quarter of FY 2012 to achieve the needed savings for the coming year. In combination with a careful workforce restructuring plan, GPO management believes these reductions in personnel can be achieved without compromising the agency’s ability to carry out mission critical operations. “GPO has restructured and reinvented itself numerous times throughout the last 150 years to carry out the critical mission of meeting the dissemination and information needs of the U.S. Congress and Federal agencies,” said Public Printer Bill Boarman. “These challenging economic times have no boundaries and are forcing many Federal agencies to seek ways to survive. GPO is open for business. We are an agency with a dedicated workforce that will continue to reengineer itself in the 21st century to serve as the digital information platform for the Federal Government.”Continue reading
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