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A Roundup of Recent Government Info News and New Resources
More news and new resources via INFOdocket.com. 1. White House Launches Ethics.gov 2. USDA: Consumers to Receive Timely Food Safety Alerts Through New State Twitter Feeds 3. A Law Classification Scheme as Linked Data? 4. Access GAO Reports and Legal Decisions via New App for iOS (Free) 5. National Broadband Map Updated, New Data Added 6. United Nations Releases 2012 E-Government Survey (Full Text), Country Rankings Updated 7. Compare Country Statistics With New United Nations CountryStats iOS App (Free) 8. UNESCO Releases World Atlas of Gender Equality in Education (Full Text, Free) 9. New Online Database from NIH: Genetic Testing Registry, Video Tutorials Available 10. Open Data: DOE Data Explorer Now Searches Individual Datasets 11. Archivist of the United States Appoints New Director of Presidential Libraries Continue reading
Problems with White House Petition Website
An article in the Huffington Post examnes the White House We the People petition web site, and garners some interesting lessons about e-government. It finds that "getting 150 print signatures is vastly easier than getting 150 electronic ones," that the site was plagued with unannounced and unexplained downtime, and that the site had a cumbersome, difficult, time-consuming, and buggy registration process. It says that the registration process "violates the White House's own policy for registering on Federal government websites" and that the site's online record keeping features violate the White House's own Open Government Directive. It says that, initially, the We the People website was not even easy to find. It notes the special difficulties associated with assuring that individuals don't vote more than once, and the conflict of public officials wanting to maximize the public perception that they are open while at the same time doing as much as possible to control the flow of information that might prove politically damaging. It concludes that, regardless of the problems with the site, it "is praiseworthy as a significant new tool for bringing democracy into the Internet Age."
- The Case of the Missing White House Petitions by J.H. Snider, Huffington Post (Oct 31, 2011).
Presidential Directives Withheld From White House Website
Presidential Directives Withheld From White House Website, by Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News (October 11th, 2011).
Last Friday, White House officials made at least two public references to Presidential Policy Directives (PPDs). PPD 1 was cited in a new executive order on computer security and PPD 8 was cited in a White House blog posting on disaster preparedness. Each Directive is a significant expression of national policy. Neither one is classified. And yet neither of them -- nor any other Obama Presidential Policy Directive -- can be found on the White House website. The White House decision not to make these documents available is a stark reminder of the incoherence of the Obama Administration's transparency policy, and its inconsistent implementation.Continue reading
DHS, White House, Privacy, Secrecy
Two stories in the news describe different approaches to government secrecy and citizen privacy:
- White House Orders New Computer Security Rules, By ERIC SCHMITT, New York Times (October 6, 2011) "The White House plans to issue an executive order on Friday to replace a flawed patchwork of computer security safeguards exposed by the disclosure of hundreds of thousands of classified government documents to WikiLeaks last year. "...In addition to these immediate measures, Mr. Obama’s order creates a task force led by the attorney general and the director of national intelligence to combat leaks from government workers, or what the White House calls an “insider threat.” "The directive also establishes a special government committee that must submit a report to the president within 90 days, and then at least once a year after that, assessing federal successes and failures in protecting classified information on government computer networks. "...[Pentagon issued cyber identity] credentials allow supervisors to track what users are working on."
- Data Mining: DHS Needs to Improve Executive Oversight of Systems Supporting Counterterrorism, Government Accountability Office, GAO-11-742 (September 7, 2011). The report says that, until needed reforms are put in place the Department of Homeland Security and its component agencies "may not be able to ensure that critical data mining systems used in support of counterterrorism are both effective and that they protect personal privacy." "By not consistently performing necessary evaluations and reviews of these systems, DHS and its component agencies risk developing and acquiring systems that do not effectively support their agencies' missions and do not adequately ensure the protection of privacy-related information."
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