Bulk data and Legislative Information 2.0
Tim O'Reilly writes that bulk data of Congressional information may soon be a reality. Congressman Mike Honda (D-CA 15th District) an interesting rider explanatory statement the subcommittee was working on which would require the agencies that the U.S. Congress to distribute their data in bulk. No doubt this was due in no small part to the wonderful folks at the Sunlight Foundation and many other govt transparency activists. The rider explanatory statement has made it into Division G - Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2009, the section that Honda's subcommittee is working on, but not in the current text of the bill. You can track the changes of the bill with GovTrack.us bill tracker (I hope Tim is reading this because he lamented the lack of change control :-) ):
The money quote on the H.R.1105 appropriations Omnibus bill rider explanatory statement is this paragraph here:
*Public Access to Legislative Data* - There is support for enhancing public access to legislative documents, bill status, summary information, and other legislative data through more direct methods such as bulk data downloads and other means of no-charge digital access to legislative databases. The Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, and Government Printing Office and the appropriate entities of the House of Representatives are directed to prepare a report on the feasibility of providing advanced search capabilities. This report is to be provided to the Committees on Appropriations of the House and Senate within 120 days of the release of Legislative Information System 2.0.Continue reading
Support open access to govt funded research!
A couple of weeks ago, we posted a call to action against H.R. 801: The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act. The bill, re-introduced by Rep. John Conyers, D-MI), would reverse the NIH Public Access Policy regarding public access to taxpayer-funded research and make it impossible for other federal agencies to put similar policies into place. Now, both the Huffington Post and Laurence Lessig have posted calls to action against H.R. 801 as well. Lessig is especially eloquent about this issue and nails the argument for open access journals. Plus, this Maplight (Money And Politics) report shows contributions received from book, newspaper and periodical publishing interests to H.R.801 sponsors -- a small price to pay for the profits those commercial publishers stand to gain right?!
The first important word to emphasize in the last sentence is "publishers." For unlike the ordinary market for creative work, here, the author isn't paid for his work through the copyright system. It is the government (indirectly) paying for the research that the author (a scientist) creates. Scientists write articles as part of their job; other scientists peer-review those articles (usually for free); and journals then publish those articles without paying the author anything. Those journals, however, then charge libraries across the world an increasingly high rate to get access to the research in those journals. As the industry has become more concentrated, those rates have skyrocketed -- rising much faster than inflation. The "open access movement" was born to create an alternative to this. Even if restrictive copyright was a necessary evil in the days of dead-tree based publishing, it was still an evil. High costs restrict access. The business model of the scientist is to spread his or her knowledge as widely as possible. Open access journals, such as, for example, those created by the Public Library of Science, have adopted a different publishing model, to guarantee that all all research is freely accessible online (under the freest Creative Commons license) immediately, to anyone around the world. This guarantee of access, however, is not purchased by any compromise in academic standards. There is still a peer-review process. There is still even a paper-based publication.I hope you'll agree the H.R. 801 is a disturbing piece of legislation and I reiterate the call to action against H.R.801 Continue reading
A New Era of Responsibility
One of our favorite rss feeds, docuticker, identifies an interesting gov doc in a recent update - Budget of the United States Government — Fiscal Year 2010: The Budget Documents, A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise (OMB). A New Era of Responsibility "... [p]rovides a description of the Obama Administration’s fiscal policies and major budgetary initiatives. This document is an overview of the full Fiscal Year 2010 Budget expected to be released this spring." It is comprehensible in the way a well written commercial outline can distill an impenetrable appellate decision. In it, the President's Message begins: "Throughout America’s history, there have been some years that appeared to roll into the next without much notice or fanfare. Budgets are proposed that offer some new programs or eliminate an initiative, but by and large continuity reigns. Then there are the years that come along once in a generation, when we look at where the country has been and recognize that we need a break from a troubled past, that the problems we face demand that we begin charting a new path. This is one of those years..." That's clear. Think of it as lyric prologue to prose recovery (I'm an optimist) -- The 2010 Budget joins its predecessors at GPO Access ... (and, some day, FDSys as well). Continue reading
Transboundary issues are needful things
There is an obvious transboundary need for free flowing, current foreign / international government information. This transboundary need reflects the nature of our most critical 21st Century challenges -- climate change, crime, trade, labour rights, poverty, hunger, etc. -- they know few hard geo-political boundaries. So how can we know what's going on in our extended community of nations, better known as the Western Hemisphere? Supra national sources of information like the United Nations and it's subsidiary regional commission ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) do what some of our finest U.S. government agency publications do -- they track the statistical universe of nations. One of my favorite sources of free flowing, current foreign / international government information is UNPULSE, "Connecting to UN Information" (A Service of the UN Library). UNPULSE links to the 2008 edition of the ECLAC's Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean, "... one of the main sources of statistical information of the region." The full text of the report, published in English and Spanish, is divided into four chapters: "(1) Demographic and social areas, with special attention to gender; (2) Economical statistics such as prices, international trade, balance of payments and national accounts; (3) Information on natural resources and the environment; and, (4) Methodological aspects and other data on sources, definitions and coverage of the statistics cited." About ECLAC: "ECLAC is one of the five regional commissions of the United Nations. It was founded with the purpose of contributing to the economic development of Latin America, coordinating actions directed towards this end, and reinforcing economic ties among countries and with other nations of the world. The promotion of the region's social development was later included among its primary objectives..." ~ Free government information flowing south to north. Continue reading
FOIA in the news
ACLU Blog of Rights Post [Familiar Story: CIA Destroys More Tapes] (March 2, 2009):
"Back in December 2007, we learned that the CIA had destroyed two videotapes depicting the "harsh interrogation" of two detainees in U.S. custody. This morning, we learned ... the CIA has actually destroyed 92 tapes. Those tapes are directly responsive to the ACLU’s October 2003 Freedom of Information Act request asking the government to release all documents and information pertaining to the treatment of detainees held in U.S. custody overseas."The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a remarkable tool. On Wednesday, January 21st, President Obama published a memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies on the broad topic of FOIA at the White House Briefing Room:
"A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency. As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, "sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants." In our democracy, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which encourages accountability through transparency, is the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open Government. At the heart of that commitment is the idea that accountability is in the interest of the Government and the citizenry alike..."Continue reading