LA Times Profiles Information Guerrillas
Los Angeles Time business columnist Michael Hiltzik discusses key players in the Free Government Information movement in the article These crusaders bring transparency to government (28 September 2009). Continue reading
FGI Wants YOUR LostDocs Receipts for new blog!
Have you wondered how many items get submitted to the Government Printing Office as fugitive documents through GPO's Lost Docs form at http://www.fdlp.gov/lostdocs? We have. Have you thought that a public "lost docs" list might be a good collection development tool? We have. Have you wondered how long it takes GPO to act on fugitive documents reports? We have. To answer these questions, Free Government Information (FGI) has established a new stand-alone blog called the Lost Docs Blog at http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/. You can also get to the blog by clicking on "Lostdocs" in the upper right-hand corner of the FGI home page. We think that the Lost Docs blog, if well utilized, will provide several important services to the Government Information Community:
- It will provide an indication of the volume of fugitive documents discovered by the community.
- It will reduce duplicate reports of fugitive documents, optimizing the time of GPO catalogers.
- It will allow depository libraries and other interested parties the opportunity to acquire materials found to be out of scope of the FDLP.
- Since blogs are indexed by Google and other search engines, lostdocs blog posts will raise awareness of government documents in search results. Participating in this blog is easy. All we need you to do is to send us your e-mail receipt from GPO to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info. That's it. If you're new to reporting fugitive documents, you might want to check out our instructions at http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/2009/07/how-to-report-a-fugitivelost-document/. We know there have been many respectable efforts at tackling the issue of fugitive documents. What we think makes this project different is the public listing of possible fugitive documents acknowledged by GPO's reporting system. If enough lost docs reporters forward their receipts to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info, then we'll have a good handle on what the documents community is finding and reporting. Because some will ask us why we didn't ask GPO for copies of their receipts, we wanted to let you know we did. GPO is involved in a number of worthy projects at the moment and was not able to commit to providing us copies of their lostdocs e-mail receipts. We appreciated the time they gave to review our proposal. Now it's up to you. If you have some lostdocs receipts on hand, send them to us. And start forwarding receipts for items you report to GPO in the future. Together we can create a new collection development resource that will benefit librarians and documents users alike. Sincerely, Continue reading
Project Censored releases 2010 top 25 “news that didn’t make the news”
Project Censored, a media research project from Sonoma State University in California every year puts out a list of "news that didn't make the news." They've just released their 2010 edition (see below). I hope lots of people will go out and get a copy for themselves and their local libraries because this is what journalism is all about. It is the flip side of govt transparency as more available govt information makes for better and more thorough journalism.
- 1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street
- 2. US Schools are More Segregated Today than in the 1950s
- 3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates
- 4. Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina
- 5. Europe Blocks US Toxic Products
- 6. Lobbyists Buy Congress
- 7. Obama’s Military Appointments Have Corrupt Past
- 8. Bailed out Banks and America’s Wealthiest Cheat IRS Out of Billions
- 9. US Arms Used for War Crimes in Gaza
- 10. Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate
- 11. Private Corporations Profit from the Occupation of Palestine
- 12. Mysterious Death of Mike Connell—Karl Rove’s Election Thief
- 13. Katrina’s Hidden Race War
- 14. Congress Invested in Defense Contracts
- 15. World Bank’s Carbon Trade Fiasco
- 16. US Repression of Haiti Continues
- 17. The ICC Facilitates US Covert War in Sudan
- 18. Ecuador’s Constitutional Rights of Nature
- 19. Bank Bailout Recipients Spent to Defeat Labor
- 20. Secret Control of the Presidential Debates
- 21. Recession Causes States to Cut Welfare
- 22. Obama’s Trilateral Commission Team
- 23. Activists Slam World Water Forum as a Corporate-Driven Fraud
- 24. Dollar Glut Finances US Military Expansion
- 25. Fast Track Oil Exploitation in Western Amazon
Congress Camp 2009: Recap
As promised, here is my report on the first-ever U.S. Congress Camp. The event was an unconference held in Washington, DC on September 12-13, 2009. Participants were from the civic hacking community, advocacy software companies, advocacy groups, gov 2.0 crowd, academia (public policy), and social media start-ups, with a sprinkling from congressional offices, and one or more from big tech and and other walks of life. The announced focus of Congress Camp was citizen-Congress communications, although topics related to congressional content in general came up. (See more on the communications topic from the recent CRS report on use of Twitter by Congress.) You can read and hear about Congress Camp on the web. See:
- CongressCamp site and blog
- Congress Camp Provides Dynamic Dialogue... posting on NextGenWeb, September 17
- Congress Camp: Where the Hill Meets Web 2.0 September 16 posting on INfluence, the blog of Forum One Communications
- Government 2.0 Radio September 20 episode, featuring interviews with Congress Camp participants (one hour; starts with general Gov 2.0 news)
CRS report on use of Twitter by Congress
Social Networking and Constituent Communication: Member Use of Twitter During a Two-Week Period in the 111th Congress, by Matthew Eric Glassman, Jacob R. Straus, and Colleen J. Shogan, Congressional Research Service 7-5700, R40823 (September 21, 2009). [posted on politico.com] See also:
- For GOP, revenge is tweet, by KENNETH P. VOGEL Politico (9/23/09)
- Tweet All About It: New Stats On Hill Usage, By Andrew Noyes, Congress Daily "Tech Daily Dose" (Sept. 23, 2009).