New FCC Report and Data on U.S. Broadband Performance
Measuring Broadband America presents the results of the first nationwide performance study of residential wireline broadband service in the United States. The study examined service offerings from 13 of the largest wireline broadband providers using automated, direct measurements of broadband performance delivered to the homes of thousands of volunteers during March 2011.
This report highlights the major findings of the study, while the separate Technical Appendix provides a detailed description of the methodology and describes the specific tests that were performed. The Commission is also making available the results of all tests run in March 2011, as well as the complete raw data set of results from all tests taken during the study period of February to June 2011.More:
- FiOS dominates as FCC measures actual Internet speeds, By Nate Anderson, ars technica (August 2, 2011). The data finally gives consumers a standardized way to compare Internet connection quality among ISPs, rather than limiting themselves to advertised speeds and prices. Want to compare lag between ISPs, or between service tiers? Now you can. ...major ISPs generally offer 80-90 percent of their advertised speeds, even during the peak hours of 7pm-11pm, with cable and fiber services actually offering higher-than-advertised speeds for much of the day. But one ISP stood out, and not in a good way: Cablevision had absolutely atrocious download speeds, dropping to nearly 50 percent of advertised speeds during peak hours.
Archiving of End of Term of Bush Administration
A description of the collaborative project that archived the web pages of the George W. Bush presidential administration at the end of its term in office.
- The “End of Term” Was Only the Beginning, by Laura Graham, a Digital Media Project Coordinator at the Library of Congress, The Signal, Digital Preservation Blog, Library of Congress, (July 26th, 2011). In late 2008, the Library of Congress, the California Digital Library, the University of North Texas, the Internet Archive and the Government Printing Office began the first collaborative project to capture and archive United States government web sites representing the “end of term” of the George W. Bush presidential administration. The partners planned, strategized, developed tools to facilitate processes and settled on a division of responsibilities. Months later, when the crawling of content was complete, there were 5.7 terabytes at CDL, 1 at UNT and 9.1 at Internet Archive, for a total of 15.9 terabytes.
Roundup of New Resources and Other Government Info News (12 Items)
Hello From DC. Here are some catchup posts from the past couple of weeks that I was unable to get to when the stories were first posted. I've also tossed in a few items not directly from a government source but that still might be of interest and/or use. The items were culled from our INFOdocket.com site where we post news and new resources on a variety of topics. Almost all of them are from the past week. 1. New Interactive Map: “World Debt Comparison: The Global Debt Clock” Data from EIU 2. World Data Population Sheet 2011 From the World Population Bureau 3. “EPA Publishes Rule to Improve Reporting of Chemical Information” 4. “New Online Database Launched by the [European] Commission to Make Legal Data on Unfair Commercial Practices Available” 5. USA.gov Directory of Mobile Apps Has Two New Additions 6. NOAA — Deepwater Horizon: A Preliminary Bibliography of Published Research and Expert Commentary 7. From the AP: “Mystery Surrounds Loss of Records, Art on 9/11? 8. New: “University of Oregon Website Holds Archive of Historic Newspapers” 9. New Database: “History Makers Makes its Debut” (Bios of Elected Officials/Others from State of Washington) 10. High Interest GAO Report — Social Media: Federal Agencies Need Policies and Procedures for Managing and Protecting Information They Access and Disseminate 11. New Report: “#SocialCongress: Perceptions and Use of Social Media on Capitol Hill” 12. California History: Online Archive of California (OAC) and Calisphere Add Local History Resources Continue reading
Center for Public Integrity Report: “Millions of Federal Court Records are Being Destroyed to Save Money”
(via INFOdocket) From the Article: The federal courts are destroying millions of judicial case records that have been stored in the Federal Records Centers of the National Archives for decades, all in an effort to save money. The plan is to destroy all records on cases that did not go to trial that were filed between 1970 and 1995. For other records, the federal judiciary has reduced the current record retention time from 25 to 15 years in an effort to cut costs. All cases that went to trial or were filed before 1970 will be kept. When a federal case is filed, it is held in the U.S. District Court of record for a period of time, but is ultimately transferred to one of the Federal Records Centers in 17 cities around the country. The National Archives charges the courts a storage fee for holding these documents; last year the fee was over $6.2 million. The new retention plan will help save $7.7 million over the next 10 years. However, the decision to destroy 79,000 boxes filled with civil cases, 43,000 boxes of criminal cases and over 500,000 bankruptcy records is cause for concern among legal historians and advocates for public access to information. Direct to Full Text of CPI Article Continue reading
New House Ethics Committee Report Search Tool
New House Ethics Committee Report Search Tool, by Daniel Schuman, Sunlight Foundation (Aug. 4, 2011).
The House Ethics Committee is responsible for investigating and making recommendations on the enforcement of House ethics rules. In an nod towards transparency, its reports and statements are published online -- but they are virtually unusable. The Committee publishes documents in an unsearchable PDF format, spreads them out over of 24 pages, and gives them impenetrable titles like "Statement of the Chairman and Ranking Minority Member." Search engines (like Google) cannot see the documents, and only the most patient will click on each link to see what's inside. We've taken all 120+ documents, made them searchable, and published them online in a database.House Ethics Committee search tool. Continue reading