San Francisco passes open data law
This is an historic day for the open government movement and makes me proud to live in San Francisco! Yesterday, EB Boyd reported that the San Francisco Board of Overseers voted unanimously to approve the first municipal open data law in the United States*. This turns the executive order that San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom issued last year directing the city’s departments to make their data public into law. **Commenter Phillip Ashlock corrected the reporting by noting that "Portland passed the first open data law in the U.S. about a year ago and their law was largely influenced by the legislation passed in Vancouver about six months before that. The major difference (and a very important one) with San Francisco's new legislation is that it is more explicit about using open licenses with the open data."
In the year since Newsom opened the data treasure troves, 200 sets of data have been released, and at least 50 apps have been built using them. Among the apps: EcoFinder, which helps people find recycling locations for all sorts of odds and ends; SpotCrime, which plots crime incidents and sends alerts to residents; and, possibly the favorite of the city's transportation-beleaguered residents, Routesy, which lets people plan tips on public transportation and provides real-time information about when the next bus or train is coming.
Hot off the ResourceShelf presses
Our buddy Gary Price at resourceshelf.com just sent along these recommendations for your reading pleasure:
- Copyright: Transcript of Oral Arguments in Costco Wholesale Corporation v. Omega, S.A. As you know this is a case the library world is watching closely. We've also included a link to a new Pub Weekly article about the case.
- New from the National Archives/NARA: 'Inside the Vaults' Video Short Commemorating Veterans Day
- NPR has done some analysis of fed gov nursing home data and now offers the NPR Nursing Home Database
Ithaka process examining FDLP
Ross Housewright has a post on the fdlpmodeling blog that explains in a bit more detail how Ithaka S+R will proceed in its contract with GPO to "develop sustainable models for the FDLP in the 21st century."
- Project structure & process, by Ross Housewright, FDLP: Modeling for the Future, October 27, 2010.
Thanks for this outline of your work plan. Your description of how you are interpreting GPO's requirement to produce a "Value Proposition" raises some more questions. You say that you will analyze "how the roles and incentives associated with the overall recommended direction, as well as the individual model or models, match with library needs" and how your recommendations would help in the "articulation of the benefits associated with participation." To me, these definitions sound like you will limit the "value proposition" to benefits to libraries and, more specifically, to libraries that "participate" in FDLP (by which, I presume you mean FDLP libraries). Do you intend to leave out of your value proposition benefits to information users and the communities (not necessarily geographically-based in the digital age) that FDLP libraries serve? I would hope that in identifying the "value" of any recommendations you make, you would take the time to identify value accrued (or lost) to current and future users of government information including citizens in general as well as economists, historians, journalists, political scientists, physicians, geographers, lawyers, students, and others (just to name a few who we know rely on government information). I would hope that you would look at the value to GPO and other government agencies of having a network of congressionally-mandated (but non-government) libraries participating in the preservation of government information. I would also hope that you would consider the value to non-FDLP libraries of having, as part of the larger library community, a community of libraries that specialize in government information. In an earlier comment (http://fdlpmodeling.net/?p=1#comment-81597121), I asked if you will be using a traditional commercial/marketing approach to developing a value proposition and how you anticipate specifying or quantifying a value and costs. Have you made decisions about this? To repeat my earlier questions: Will you include costs assumed by FDLP libraries and government information users or only costs assumed by GPO? How will you quantify the value and benefits of permanent, free public access to all government information (including non-current information such as old censuses and old annual reports)? Will you also consider what risks your recommendations create for the loss of free access to government information and the costs associated with any such losses? Finally, I believe that Ithaka S+R's Roger Schonfeld was a contributor to the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access. Will your current work use a similar understanding when your develop a value proposition? Here is the BRTF definition (page 24 of http://brtf.sdsc.edu/biblio/BRTF_Final_Report.pdf): "2.1.1 Value and Benefits" "When speaking about value, economists like to ask "Who benefits?" or "Who cares?" because well-articulated demand starts with a clear and compelling value proposition about the benefits to be gained by having, in our case, access to information at some point in the future. The value of information is not to be confused with its monetary or financial value per se, although it can often be denominated in currency. The value of digital assets is best understood as what digital materials are good for, and that is usually understood as the ways that the materials are used -- to advance knowledge, entertain or bring pleasure, help solve problems, or inform public policy." "Each user community will identify its own set of values and benefits in the digital materials they demand. For example, in scholarly discourse there is a clear community consensus about the value of e-journals over time." Thanks for your time in considering these issues.Continue reading
High Fructose Corn Syrup and Sugar Tariffs
One of the assignments in our government librarianship class is to write a term paper this semester. For me, this is a fantastic opportunity to finally figure out just what is happening in the world of corn growers’ lobbying, just how the Corn Refiners Association gained such a loud voice, and what defines the history of corn - the legislative history, that is.
As the hue and cry over the use and nutrition concerns of high fructose corn syrup led the Corn Refiners Association to apply to the FDA for a change in name to "corn sugar," the negative public opinion has pushed some food companies to switch formulas to include cane sugar or fruit juice sweeteners. But will that really impact the corn lobby or the government corn subsidies? Will the government lower the foreign sugar tariff? Political implications aside, just how the corn industry became such a power player will be a fascinating world to research.
My interest in such a topic stems from two things. First, when I was growing up during the 1980s, Coke changed their formula and the new version never tasted the same - and it was a marked difference to me. To this day, I have nostalgia for the original formula (which contained sugar). Second, I thoroughly enjoyed Twinkie, Deconstructed, a book about the common ingredients in food, and how these ingredients are grown, processed, and sometimes mined into becoming our food. The lengths to which high fructose corn syrup has been processed, and then utilized in the high number of food industry sectors, is alarming. Perhaps it is psychological, but I believe that the foods which contain sugar as opposed to high fructose corn syrup just taste better, and when I travel to Europe, where HFCS is not available, I enjoy my sugar-laden Coke.
My research is about to begin this week. I will visit different depository libraries in New York City and while poring through the Congressional Records, CRS reports, and other government documents. I will read the Corn Refiners Association webpages, and I anticipate looking at the FDA and DHHS sites well. I am curious just how corn has shaped our history, and how that is reflected in our government documents.
And yet…what is connection to the sugar import tariffs? According to a 2005 open letter from the Consumer Federation of America, the sugar import tariffs create an artificial demand. Naturally, the American Sugar Alliance disagrees. But have sugar import tariffs contributed to the search for alternative sweeteners? In preliminary research, it appears that the protection of the domestic sugar market artificially creates demand, such that the cost has increased dramatically. From what I understand, some confectioners, such as Brach’s, have moved their operations to Canada. If that is the case, then can it be argued that the sugar squeeze has essentially created a market for a product such as high fructose corn syrup? If so then maybe the Corn Refiners Association should bill the American Sugar Alliance for the cost of lobbying the FDA for a change in name for HFCS to “corn sugar.”
So my research begins…and regardless of what my research reveals through the journey from 1789 sugar tariffs to 2010 corn lobbies, I can write with confidence, that it would been wonderful to have been a fly on the wall for these historical Congressional hearings, with a cane sugar-infused Coke in one hand and HFCS-free cornbread in the other.