New CRS Report: Retaining and Preserving Federal Records in a Digital Environment
[w:Steven Aftergood] over at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Project on Government Secrecy to (which you should all subscribe!) recently posted this CRS Report describing access to federal records over time as "increasingly complicated, costly, and potentially impossible.” We really appreciate Mr Aftergood's work over the years to shake loose and make publicly accessible government documents and especially CRS reports which are in the public domain but not distributed to the public or to FDLP libraries. Here's more on CRS reports. Thanks also to Sabrina Pacifici at the beSpacific blog for posting about it (and you should all subscribe to beSapcific too!). Retaining and Preserving Federal Records in a Digital Environment: Background and Issues for Congress. Wendy Ginsberg, Analyst in American National Government. July 26, 2013 Continue reading
claims vs reality by about NSA surveillance by @ProPublica
ProPublica has put together a set of 6 videos + analysis debunking claims about NSA surveillance -- much of which has been leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden and reported by Glenn Greenwald in the UK Guardian newspaper -- by Obama administration officials like Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Director of NSA General Keith Alexander, and President Obama himself.
Georgia Claims Its Annotated Laws Are Covered By Copyright, Threatens Carl Malamud For Publishing The Law
Georgia Claims Its Annotated Laws Are Covered By Copyright, Threatens Carl Malamud For Publishing The Law, by Mike Masnick, techdirt (Jul 30, 2013). Masnick notes that, technically, states that claim to be able to copyright their laws are on reasonably firm legal ground, even if they're on completely illogical common sense ground but that fact "doesn't make it any saner to claim such a copyright." Among other things, Georgia claims (apparently as a justification) that the unannotated Georgia Code is available to the public at no charge at www.legis.ga.gov. Masnick continues:
It's not as if the state needed the "incentive" of copyright to publish an annotated version of the law. If anything, this seems like copyright misuse. But, even beyond that, it just seems counterproductive from a public policy standpoint to want to make your own laws harder to understand.Continue reading
NARA releases its annual Records Management Self-Assessment and a reminder to report fugitive documents
It takes a village ... of government information librarians to make sure that government documents within scope of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) are collected, described, and distributed to FDLP libraries around the country. Here's an example of how the FDLP safety net works for fugitive government documents -- those documents that *are* within scope, but have not made their way into the FDLP system.
- My friend Gary Price tweets about NARA's release of its 2012 annual "Records Management Self-Assessment" which tells the good, bad and ugly about whether or not Federal agencies are compliant with statutory and regulatory records management requirements.
- I retweeted it as I know lots of my followers are interested to know how federal agencies are doing in their archival responsibilities. Continue reading
It Only Takes 5: news from Minnesotans for the American Community Survey (ACS)
[Editor's note: this is a guest post from Joan Naymark, director of Minnesotans for the American Community Survey (MACS). Joan's bio is posted below. Check out MACS facebook page to keep up to date and find out how you can help assure that the ACS continues.] Continue reading