US Census of population and housing now online 1790 – 2000
Yes it's census season again. And to mark the coming of the 2010 census, The US Census Bureau has digitalized all the decennial censuses in pdf from 1790 through 2000. Check out how your city/town/state/district has changed over the 210 years of the census. Census geeks might also want to check out this handy guide to the census called Measuring America: The Decennial Censuses From 1790 to 2000 where one can read the actual questionnaires for each census and get background history on each census. Oh and don't forget American Factfinder, the Census's database for the 1990 and 2000 census, American Community Survey, Economic Census, and annual economic surveys. Factfinder includes quick facts, mapping tools and more. Happy data hunting! Continue reading
FCC to propose video.gov archive
According to Aliya Sternstein at NextGov there's a proposal in the draft federal broadband plan to create a .gov video archive called video.gov. It'll be similar to the government's data.gov initiative. Wonder when they'll create a documents.gov? Oh yeah, they already have that! It's called the FDLP and it's been around for almost 200 years!!
A proposal in the draft of the government's imminent broadband plan would create a YouTube-like online archive called Video.gov to preserve agencies' Web content and possibly information provided by the media, an official with the Federal Communications Commission said on Monday. The planned national digital archives for the 21st century would expand upon the government's Data.gov Web site, a warehouse of downloadable federal statistics, and be maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration, the Library of Congress and other agencies, said Eugene Huang, FCC's director of government performance and civic engagement for the national broadband plan.[Thanks for the tweet Michael Riedyk at DotGov] Continue reading
Open Government at NARA
In response to the Open Government Directive, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has created a web page devoted to its Open Government Initiatives (http://www.archives.gov/open/). Currently, it lists four NARA datasets: CFR, Federal Register, Archival Descriptions from ARC, and Organizational Descriptions from ARC. These listings conform to the Open Government Directive call for agencies to create a gateway at the specific web address at http://www.[agency].gov/open. But, in addition, NARA has created "a records control schedule website that allows the public and Federal agencies to browse scanned copies of unclassified, NARA-approved records control schedules." (http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/rcs/). The only "announcement" of this new service so far has apparently been a response to a question on the NARAtions blog. Kate has more details and background at ArchivesNext. (Big hat tip!). Continue reading
Some answers emerge on warrantless surveillance
Back on September 18, 2007, the House Judiciary Committee chaired by John Conyers (D-Michigan) held a hearing entitled "Warrantless Surveillance and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act". In that hearing, Conyers posed some questions to the Justice Department to get at the Department’s views on the legal framework governing electronic surveillance under the amended [w:Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] (FISA) -- we've been tracking FISA for some time on FGI. The Committee hearing volume (pdf) was published in June 2008 without the Justice Department’s answers to these questions, because they were provided to Congress too late to be included in the published record. As you might remember, back in December, 2005 the NY Times broke a story about the Bush administration secretly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials. FAS as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and other civil liberties organizations have been tracking the [w:NSA warrantless surveillance controversy]. Many thanks to Steven Aftergood and the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) for submitting a FOIA request to make public Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein's written responses to those questions posed about this important program and bringing to light the legal perspective that held sway within the Bush administration's Justice Department.
“If the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) was perfectly legal as has been claimed, why would companies who cooperated in it need immunity?” the Committee asked. (To protect classified information, among other reasons, the Department responded.) “Is the President free to disregard any provisions of FISA with which he disagrees?” (No, not exactly.) “If an individual in the United States is suspected of working in collusion with persons outside the United States–such that an investigation of one is in effect the investigation of the other–under what circumstances, generally, would you use criminal or other FISA wiretaps?” (Targeting of persons in the United States can only be done under FISA procedures.)Continue reading
Lost Docs Blog News: New Category – Explanation Needed
3/1/2010 - Updated to add criteria of non-distribution of tangible product to FDLP. Thanks to some documents reported to FGI's Lost Docs Blog last month, the Lost Docs blog has a new category that needs explaining. The category is called "Explanation Needed." GPO lost docs receipts submitted to lostdocs.freegovinfo.info will be assigned this category if: 1) Cataloging records exist for both tangible (Paper and/or microfiche) and online versions of the item submitted that were added to the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) earlier than the datestamp on the lost docs receipt. 2) The catalog record for the tangible version indicates that GPO cataloged the tangible version within five years of the publishing date of the item. 3) There is clear evidence from the bib record or depository librarian testimony that the tangible item was NOT offered to Federal Depository Libraries. We have a five year limit because GPO Acquisitions staff have indicated they rarely have success in finding depository copies of tangible items more than five years old. We at FGI don't insist that GPO distribute a tangible item when that item is solely available in an online format, but when a tangible item is available and fits the program, it should be distributed. GPO's policy on dissemination, SOD 301, states (emphasis mine), "When the product is available both online and in a tangible format, GPO will disseminate the online version to depository libraries. Tangible versions will be offered as well, budget permitting." Hopefully this means that most of the time the budget will permit this. If an item wasn't distributed for budget reasons, GPO should note this in the print record. Until the non-distribution of these tangible items is explained and obviously noted in the cataloging record for a given item, it will keep the "Explanation Needed" tag. However, we will also continue to tag such items as "false positive" since we believe the primary focus of "lost docs" is documenting government publications that have escaped the National Bibliography GPO is required to maintain and because people do have access (at least for now) to the online version. We encourage depositories to report non-distribution of CGP-Cataloged documents through GPO help and not through the Lost Docs form. Continue reading