CIA closes office that declassifies historical materials
CIA closes office that declassifies historical materials, By Ken Dilanian, Los Angeles Times (August 21, 2013). "The Historical Collections Division is the latest casualty of sequester cuts. The office handling Freedom of Information Act requests will take over the work. "...Some of the declassification is required by law, so the Historical Collections Division, which focused on discretionary declassification involving topics that scholars found compelling, was the easiest target for trimming costs...." Hat tip to InfoDocket! Continue reading
CIA makes public its role in 1953 Iran coup. iPad app soon follows
In a news and FOIA coup (pardon the pun), Malcolm Byrne at the National Security Archive recently announced that the CIA declassified and released documents confirming their role in the 1953 Iran Coup that overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq (more news coverage here). This adds information to the already informative National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book #28 "Secret CIA History of the Iran Coup 1953." And now, hot on the heels of this amazing disclosure, Cognito Comics has just released the CIA Operation Ajax Interactive Graphic Novel for iPad and iPhone (with Android coming soon). Check it out! Continue reading
Tauberer et al publish best practices for making government data “license-free”
Back in May, we posted about the Obama Administration's executive order on open government data and cited Govtrack.us's Josh Tauberer's analysis of the Executive Order as missing the mark and being confused -- if not downright misleading -- about "open licensing." Continue reading
Hot off the presses: NDSA National Agenda for Digital Stewardship
The inaugural National Agenda for Digital Stewardship has just been released in conjunction with the first day of the Digital Preservation 2013 meeting in Washington, D.C. (so wish I were there!).
While the report admits that "it has become increasingly difficult to adequately preserve valuable digital content because of a complex set of interrelated societal, technological, financial, and organizational pressures," it's great to see this call for community effort that especially speaks to the need to preserve digital government records.
Executive Summary (PDF, 889 KB)
Full Document (PDF, 1.07 MB) Continue reading