NYC geographic data now available for free
The city of New York has finally made a wealth of geographic data available for free. As The Atlantic reports, where you once had to pay $1,500, now the entire package of data -- cleverly trademarked "BYTES of the BIG APPLE" by the city -- can be accessed for free. This also means that anything made from the data can be shared on the Internet.
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Want to help make FOIA requests easier and faster? Chip in to FOIAmachine kickstarter
The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) has a KickStarter campaign to raise money to build FOIAmachine. What's FOIA you ask? Find out more about [w:Freedom of Information Act] (FOIA). FOIAmachine will help journalists, researchers and the public submit FOIA requests, track their progress through the Federal government bureaucracy, and post documents from successful FOIA requests online for public access. While they've made their original goal, they're looking to stretch it in order to build out additional features and host open records training in 5 states. I'm a backer and you should be too. You've got 3 days to help CIR meet their goal and help make FOIAmachine a reality.
GovernmentAttic releases 16 FOIA’d reports by the Defense Intelligence Agency
According to this story on /., the GovernmentAttic website has just published a dossier of reports produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency describing biological weapons development in nations throughout the world.
"These sixteen documents comprise a set of U.S. Army Medical Intelligence reports from the 1970s and 1980s concerning the extent of research into and deployment of biological and chemical weapons activities in various nations. These reports were requested under Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR), administratively processed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and released by the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM)."be sure to take a look at the GovernmentAttic, they've got a ton of FOIA'd and very interesting publications available. Continue reading
Status of ERIC
ERIC (AKA, "Education Resources Information Center") of the Department of Education has an announcement of limitations of its new web site during the transition from the old web site.
- Note from the Commissioner, Ruth Curran Neild, Commissioner of the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance Institute of Education Sciences. As ERIC transitions into a new contract cycle ... there will be a delay in indexing material. New material will not be released from August through October. ... Currently, the full text of all peer-reviewed articles and of all articles published after 2005 is released, as are the articles released through the scanning process. We are continuing to scan user-requested PDFs during this transition, but the mechanism to release the cleared PDFs will not go live until this fall. ...In early 2015, ERIC will release a brand new section of the ERIC website that allows users to browse ERIC's content by topic area. Continue reading
Why we need digital deposit
August 13, 2013 / 1 Comment on Why we need digital deposit
David Rosenthal describes a change in the text of a speech that Attorney General Holder gave last October touting the governments Distressed Homeowner Initiative. The text of the speech as originally posted has been changed, apparently without notification or explanation. Continue reading →
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