GPO & Federal Judiciary Announce Pilot Program of Enhanced Public Access To Federal Court Opinions
GPO & Federal Judiciary Enhance Public Access To Federal Court Opinions Government Printing Office, Press Release, May 4, 2011 No. 11-23.
The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) and the Federal Judiciary are launching a one- year pilot program providing free public access to court opinions through GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys). The joint project was approved by the Judicial Conference of the United States and GPO's Congressional oversight committee, the Joint Committee on Printing. When fully implemented, the pilot will include up to 42 courts. The Judiciary continually has sought ways to enhance public access to court opinions. Free access to opinions in all Federal courts is currently available via the Judiciary's Public Access to Court Electronic Records service (PACER). Building on that success, staff from the Administrative Office of the United States Courts met with GPO management to explore making opinions available through FDsys, which can provide the public with a robust search engine that can search common threads across opinions and courts. The public will be able to access court opinions in the next several months through GPO's Federal Digital System: www.fdsys.govContinue reading
Reductions in EIA’s Energy Data and Analysis Programs
Along with reductions at the Census Bureau and reductions in federal openness websites, we now have word from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) that budget reductions will "require significant cuts in EIA's data, analysis, and forecasting activities." The press release has a long list of projects and publications that will reduced, terminated, and curtailed:
- Immediate Reductions in EIA's Energy Data and Analysis Programs Necessitated by FY 2011 Funding Cut, EIA, APRIL 28, 2011. Press Release EIA-2011-07.
- Do not prepare or publish 2011 edition of the annual data release on U.S. proved oil and natural gas reserves.
- Curtail collection and dissemination of monthly state-level data on wholesale petroleum product prices, including gasoline
- Terminate updates to EIA's International Energy Statistics
- Halt preparation of the 2012 edition of EIA's International Energy Outlook.
- Eliminate annual published inventory of Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States.
Transforming classification. The new NARA blog on the block
For all you (de)classification geeks out there, here's an interesting new .gov blog to add to your blogrolls. NARA's Public Interest Declassification Board now has a blog called Transforming Classification. They'll be posting a bunch of white papers on various topics over the coming months. I'm looking forward to the conversation.
The Public Interest Declassification Board is an advisory board established by Congress to promote the fullest possible public access to a thorough, accurate, and reliable documentary record of significant U.S. national security decisions and activities. The Board’s mandate includes advising the President and other government officials on policies deriving from the issuance by the President of Executive orders regarding the classification and declassification of national security information... ...President Obama has charged the Board with designing a more fundamental transformation of the security classification system. In response to his request, we are proposing new solutions that address the shortcomings of the current system and tackle the challenges of digital records. By reducing inefficiencies and increasing public access, our proposals aim to improve the classification/declassification’s system capacity to protect and serve the American people. Every other Wednesday over the next eight weeks, we will post either two or three “white paper” synopses to the blog describing an element of our proposed transformation.[HT to Meredith Stewart] Continue reading
Lessig: “The architecture of access to scientific knowledge: just how badly we have messed this up”
Lunchtime Listen: Lawrence Lessig, speaking at CERN, talks about how hard, expensive, and limited our access is to scholarly information and how we have created this system.
- The architecture of access to scientific knowledge: just how badly we have messed this up, Lawrence Lessig CERN Colloquium and Library Science Talk, Streaming video (18 April 2011)
Hearing to address White House social-media preservation policies next week
David Ferriero, the Archivist of the U.S., will be testifying next week at a hearing that will address digital preservation of White House social media.
- White House officials to explain social-media policies next week, By Gautham Nagesh, The Hill (04/28/11). Senior White House officials will explain the Obama administration's policy for preserving tweets and other messages sent using social networks at a House Oversight hearing next Tuesday. The White House's official policy states that all messages between the president and his staffers and third parties on social-media sites like Twitter and Facebook must be preserved under the Presidential Records Act. That includes all tweets as well as direct messages and replies sent to official accounts. But panel Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said it remains unclear what the administration's policies are for unofficial accounts still used for official communications, such as the personal accounts of some staff members....