Won’t get Fooled Again: Day 16
I think the Obama honeymoon is over. The withdrawl of nominees due to failure to pay taxes, sharp rebukes from House and Senate republicans over the economic stimulus package, That is not say his influence as a change agent is curtailed. You don't live and survive brutal Chicago politics for very long if you fall to the ground in a faint after your opponents deliver a quick partisan jab to the ribs (or even more painfully, sometimes by your supporters.) It would be a mistake to assume any sense of goodwill and comity will overwhelm the toxic partisanship that has flooded our political swamplands over so many decades. It is going to take a few more hits, losses, and diversions to reverse such a trend. In this way, supporters of free and open government information ought to take the long view and realize that it will take at least eight more years to undo the damage done by the Bush administrations to the nation's robust exchange of public and civic information. As I said in an earlier blog post, if Obama is still President for those two terms, we at least have an executive officer who shares our rhetoric of democratic access to government information. Whether he will be able to hold fast against the entrenched institutional interests that resist this kind of free flow of information (too expensive, to hard, too threatening, too much a security risk) remains to be seen. To this end, any of the near future plans from our various professional association discussions and study efforts must rise above the politcal tides that flow through the civic structures every two and four years. Just as there is a concepts of a "deep environment" argues for a perspective and planning structure that anticipates long term effects and relationships, so too there could be a concept of "deep civic information" that transcends the political life cycles of our national and state elections. This lesson was brought home again here in Illinois when our barely week old new Governor, and the newly elected leadership of the General Assembly, woke up to realize that they must now deal with a 9 billion dollar budget shortfall, state institutions that are either broken, obscure, or corrupted by indifference or political influence. If librarians are going to salvage anything from this political train wreck, it will be a way to connect the governors and those they serve with those flows of public information that matter more than the politics. See you on Day 17. Continue reading
Guide of the Week: Defense Readiness
President Obama has been President a few weeks. On Guide of the Week we come to the last of the 13 urgent issues facing President Obama and the new Congress. The Government Accountability Office recently identified Defense Readiness as one of 13 urgent issues facing the next President and Congress. Today on Guide of the Week, we'll talk about a librarian produced guide from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange Wiki that can help inform citizens, Congress and President-Elect Obama on this issue. After searching through the Handout Exchange, the only guide that really seems helpful is the University of Colorado at Boulder's guide, Military Information Resources and Periodicals. The folks at UC Boulder link to several resources that should be of use to people studying military readiness and its possible improvement, including:
- Annual Defense Report - "Annual Report to the President and the Congress, commonly referred to as the Annual Defense Report, details how the Department of Defense built its capabilities and is working to maintain them in the future. In addition to fulfilling a statutory requirement, specifically U.S.C. Title 10, the Secretary of Defense's Annual Defense Report is widely distributed and serves as a basic reference document for those interested in national defense issues and programs."
- Federation of American Scientists Military Analysis Network - This group is a privately-funded, non-profit organization "engaged in analysis and advocacy on science, technology, and public policy for global security". The federation provides extensive information on U.S. military operations, aircraft, Navy ships, land warfare systems, missiles, smart weapons, dumb bombs, aircraft and naval equipment, and a directory of defense contractors. In addition, it provides analysis of significant issues, such as NATO expansion, and an extensive collection of Congressional material, such as budgets and GAO and CRS reports. The site also provides extensive information on military aircraft, ships, land warfare, and missile technologies in the "Rest of the World (ROW)".
Won’t Get Fooled Again: Day 15
As government information librarians, we need to start getting serious about our contributions to thinking about our future roles as cogs in the civic machinery. I mean, if the computer folk can weigh in on the topic of "open government" with a response the blends a number of professional perspectives into a structured and coherent document -- can librarians of government information stripes do no less? I know I might sound like a broken record here, but several of national professional associations are trying to rally the troops through specific discussions, white papers, and organized discussions. These include (but not limited to) -- the Federal Depository Library Council the Association of Research Libraries the American Library Association Much of the focus of these groups is on the future shape of the federal depository library system. Points to be considered include -- How and what will libraries collect What are the new models of public service What roles can libraries play in the preservation of government information What can we do with other levels of government: local, regional, national, international. What are the new models of organization for effective government information service in our libraries? Respond to my daily posts. Submit your own posts. Write white papers. Contribute to the discussion. Our future roles and effectiveness are ours to lose. Continue reading
Recommendations on Open Government from computer scientists and computing practitioners
The Washington policy committee of the Association for Computing Machinery, the professional association that represents computer scientists and computing practitioners, released its Policy Recommendations on Open Government today. The really important thing about these recommendations is that they reflect an understanding that there is a difference between "presenting" information, usually in the form of a web site, and providing the underlying data that anyone can then "present" or use or re-use. As David Robinson said in an earlier proposal, "[I]s a government monopoly on 'presentations' of the data the best way...? Probably not. If Congress orders the federal bureaucracy to provide a web site for end users, then we will all have to live with the one web site they cook up" (The (Ironic) Best Way to Make the Bailout Transparent, By David Robinson, Freedom to Tinker, January 27th, 2009) Among the recommendations:
- Data published by the government should be in formats and approaches that promote analysis and reuse of that data.
- Citizens should be able to download complete datasets of regulatory, legislative or other information, or appropriately chosen subsets of that information, when it is published by government.
- Citizens should be able to directly access government-published datasets using standard methods such as queries via an API (Application Programming Interface).
Today's statement puts the weight of America's computing professionals behind the push for machine-readable government data.Continue reading
GPO’s “Google”?
A Washington Times article about FDsys describes it as GPO's "Google" for Federal Documents:
Web users could just as easily use Google or other search engines to find government information, but FDsys assures access to the original, authentic versions of government documents.I am amused by the comments posted to this article so far:
Why would you call this "Google" for documents, unless you are simply try to get web hits by using the google name. I went to the site and it is not immediately clear where in tarnation to find anything. I'm 38, computer literate and immediately find the site unappealing, and definitely not user friendly. The genius of google is it's simplicity. The GPO site is just like the GPO building itself Old, archaic, and difficult to navigate. I suppose if I was in the business of publishing paper copies, I wouldn't want people finding things easily online either.Perhaps a government documents librarian could help you navigate it? ;-)
$20 million, five years, and it's still not as good as Google - classic government work. Why didn't they just give the docs to Google and let them do it?Because Google would mess it up even worse. Look at Google Books and how they block full access to public domain government documents! Sigh...why did the article have to mention Google?
I found the search engine very easy to use and very powerful -- apparently it's metadata-aware, so it can do much more sophisticated searches than Google allows. It also looks like they built in a nice drilldown feature that lets you find what you're looking for when you don't know what you're looking for.Glad this user noticed that. And my favorite quote:
It's a good start at providing information to interested citizens. The information overload will be intense.Yes, it is a good start. But the info overload is already intense! Continue reading