Court Says Agency Classification Decision is Not “Logical”
"In an opinion published this week, DC District Judge Richard W. Roberts did an astonishing thing that federal courts almost never do: He probed into the decision to classify a government document and concluded that it was not well-founded. He ordered the agency to release the document under the Freedom of Information Act." (Aftergood)
- Court Says Agency Classification Decision is Not "Logical". by Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News (March 2nd, 2012)
- Judge issues rare order to release classified document. By Josh Gerstein, Politico (2/29/12).
Open Government vs. Open Data
A new paper distinguishes between open government data that makes the government as a whole more transparent and politically neutral public data that have nothing to do with public accountability.
- Yu, Harlan and Robinson, David G., The New Ambiguity of 'Open Government' (February 28, 2012). Princeton CITP / Yale ISP Working Paper. Available at SSRN. Today a regime can call itself "open" if it builds the right kind of web site -- even if it does not become more accountable or transparent. This shift in vocabulary makes it harder for policymakers and activists to articulate clear priorities and make cogent demands. This essay proposes a more useful way for participants on all sides to frame the debate: We separate the politics of open government from the technologies of open data.
Urban Poor Fear Being Left Behind In Digital Age
"Nationwide, 40 percent of households with annual incomes below $20,000 (below the poverty line for a family of four) have broadband access at home, while 93 percent of households with incomes exceeding $75,000 have high-speed Internet, according to a 2010 Federal Communications Commission survey."
- Without Internet, Urban Poor Fear Being Left Behind In Digital Age, by Gerry Smith, Huffington Post (March 1, 2012).
Security and Privacy Controls for Federal Information Systems
"More than a year in the making, the National Institute of Standards and Technology issued Feb. 28 an initial public draft updating one of its premier special publications, Security and Privacy Controls for the Federal Information Systems and Organizations, which incorporates expanded privacy controls and addresses new threats that were unheard of when NIST issued revision 3 in 2009." (NIST Updating Catalog of Controls, By Eric Chabrow, Bank Info Security, February 29, 2012.)
- Security and Privacy Controls for the Federal Information Systems and Organizations, NIST Special Publication 800-53, Revision 4 (Initial Public Draft). NIST Joint Task Force Transformation Initiative, Gaithersburg, MD (February 2012). The purpose of this publication is to provide guidelines for selecting and specifying security controls for organizations and information systems supporting the executive agencies of the federal government to meet the requirements of FIPS 200, Minimum Security Requirements for Federal Information and Information Systems.
Train the user or get better user interfaces?
February 29, 2012 / 1 Comment on Train the user or get better user interfaces?
An article in The Atlantic concludes that, "So maybe our greater emphasis shouldn't be on training users to work with bad search tools, but to improve the search tools."
- Google-Trained Minds Can't Deal with Terrible Research Database UI, By Alan Jacobs, The Atlantic, (Feb 27 2012).
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