Landmark Open Government Legislation Introduced
Landmark Public Online Information Act Jointly Reintroduced In House And Senate, by Daniel Schuman, Sunlight Foundation (April 4, 2011)
Today Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) and Representative Steve Israel (D-NY) reintroduced the landmark Public Online Information Act. If enacted, POIA would bring the government into the 21st century by requiring the government to embrace the presumption that government-held information, already required to be public, must be available online. Data should be free from the shadows of obscurity and brought into the sunlight of the Internet.More: Continue reading
Needs Work: Congressional Record Printing Savings Act of 2011
As part of the search to save federal dollars, Senator Tom Coburn has introduced S 674, the Congressional Record Printing Savings Act of 2011. This act may save up to $8 million a year by reducing "unnecessary" printing of the Congressional Record. You can find the text through Open Congress. We at FGI are not opposed in principle to printing fewer copies of government publications as long as permanant public access and preservation issues are adequately addressed. We don't believe this particular bill does so. We see three main problems with the "Congressional Record Printing Savings Act of 2011":
- The bill only gives gpo 45 days to determine the appropriate number of printed archival copies. - There is little published research on the appropriate number of printed copies for preservation purposes, and most of the available research deals with periodicals. Some original research needs to be done specifically for government publications and this couldn't be completed in 45 days.
- The bill is silent on where these copies should be stored. - This legislation directs GPO to determine a number of preservation copies, but doesn't state where these copies would be stored. Will the copies provided to Congress count? Will geographic distribution be taken into account? Will some be mandated to be stored in libraries? We the public don't know and we should before accepting a diminished number of copies.
- It misses an opportunity to deposit the electronic CR to depository libraries as an additional anti-tampering safeguard. - If the printed copy of the Congressional Record is going to be diminished, then assuring the authencity and permanent public access to the electronic Congressional Record will gain in importance. Keeping multiple electronic copies in non-federal hands would be an important safeguard against future alterations of the Congressional Record and ought to be considered by Congress.
FBI Launches New Electronic Reading Room
The Vault is a new "electronic reading room" at fbi.gov. It contains more than 2,000 documents that have been scanned from paper into digital copies including more than 25 new files that have been released to the public but never added to the FBI website, dozens of records previously posted but removed as requests diminished, and files from the FBI's previous electronic reading room. Check out:
Hat tip to Sabrina I. Pacifici: FBI Launches New Electronic Reading Room, (April 03, 2011). Continue readingLive blogging Depository Library Conference Spring 2011 #dlc11s
We'll be live blogging once again at the Spring 2011 Depository Library Conference from San Antonio, TX. With a new Public Printer and Superintendent of Documents, the discussions are sure to be interesting. The 3 plenary sessions will be especially interesting and include discussions on PACER, future needs and goals of the FDLP and a weds morning session on permanent public access to digital material with a panel from HathiTrust, Internet Archive, GPO staff and Chris Brown. The twitter hashtag #dlc11s and #dlc11 will show up in the live blog so we hope many of the attendees will tweet their thoughts and comments. Twapper Keeper now has a subscription model, so the only archive of tweets will be the live blog. If anyone would like to volunteer to be a DLC reporter and use CoverItLive to track the conference, please contact me ASAP at freegovinfo AT gmail DOT com.
Federal Reserve releases secret loan documents
Bloomberg has obtained previously secret loan documents from the Federal Reserve Bank and has made those documents available for download (see zip file link below).
- Fed Will Release Bank Loan Data as Top Court Rejects Appeal, By Greg Stohr and Bob Ivry, Bloomberg (Mar 21, 2011). The order marks the first time a court has forced the Fed to reveal the names of banks that borrowed from its oldest lending program, the 98-year-old discount window. The disclosures, together with details of six bailout programs released by the central bank in December under a congressional mandate, would give taxpayers insight into the Fed's unprecedented $3.5 trillion effort to stem the 2008 financial panic.
- Fed Releases Discount-Window Loan Records During Crisis Under Court Order, By Craig Torres, Bloomberg (Mar 31, 2011). The Federal Reserve released thousands of pages of secret loan documents under court order, almost three years after Bloomberg LP first requested details of the central bank's unprecedented support to banks during the financial crisis.
- Foreign Banks Tapped Fed’s Secret Lifeline Most at Crisis Peak, By Bradley Keoun and Craig Torres, Bloomberg (Apr 1, 2011).
Bloomberg News is posting the Fed documents here for subscribers to the Bloomberg Professional Service as well as online at www.bloomberg.com.
- zip file [135 MB, unzips to 175 MB and 894 PDF files].
- The Bank Run We Knew So Little About, By GRETCHEN MORGENSON, New York Times (April 2, 2011)