An unpublished federal history of the U.S.-led reconstruction of Iraq
Official History Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders by T. Christian Miller, ProPublica and James Glanz, The New York Times, December 13, 2008. Also at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/world/middleeast/14reconstruct.html
An unpublished, 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure. The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience. (PDF, 6.9Meg) The draft of a federal report by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. Annotations are based on the review's findings. The draft was provided to reporters at The New York Times and ProPublica by two people outside the Inspector General's office who have read the draft. Continue reading
A guide to preservation
Francine Berman, director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, has a new article on digital preservation worth reading:
- Berman, Francine. Got data?: a guide to data preservation in the information age. Communications of the ACM, 51, no. 12 (2008): 50-56. [subscription required]
Trend 4. Increasing commercialization of digital data storage and services. The 2006 introduction of Amazon Simple Storage Solutions (www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=16427261) was a high-profile example of the trend toward commercialization of data storage and data services. Today, there is considerable activity in the private sector around data storage and services for the consumer; for example, we share and store digital photos through Flickr, employ Apple’s Time Capsule for regular personal computer backup, and use LexisNexis for online legal services. The commercialization of data storage and services contributes an important component of the data CI [cyberinfrastructure] environment needed to harness the potential of our information-rich world. However, private-sector storage and services are not the solution to all digital data needs. For some digital data considered to be “in the public interest” (such as census data, oficial records, critical scientiic data collections, and a variety of irreplaceable data), a greater level of trust, monitoring, replication, and accountability is required to minimize the likelihood of loss or damage and ensure the data will be there for a very long time. For such community data sets, stewardship by a trusted entity (such as libraries, archives, museums, universities, and institutional repositories), whose mission is the public good rather than profit, is generally required.Continue reading
TARP Bailout Information
The "Troubled Assets Relief Program" (TARP) (Public Law 110-343, 122 STAT. 3765, DOCID: f:publ343.110) is the financial "bailout." ProPublica has a lot of useful information on the bailout:
- Map: Show Me the TARP Money
- Show Me the TARP Money (a running count of the TARP $700 billion funds, updated regularly. includes Amount, Date, Bank Name, Background Profile.)
- Continuing Coverage
- RSS feed
- Bailout Widget you can put on your site.
41 Days to Government Information Liberation
1. Recognize the importance of librarians and their institutions in the sustainability of a dynamic civic culture. I was looking through an ancient artifact this afternoon called "An information agenda for the 1980s: a summary report". All this blog chatter about flickr projects in the Library of Congress, and innovative proposals from Carl Malamud, kind of made me nostalgic for "library big thinking" before the rise of the computing machine. This report is one of those dreadnoughts of library research that went on to frame much of the policy and research challenges of the early 1990s. It describes 101 specific projects that can help frame the research and understanding of how libraries must change in the crazy days of technological and economic revolution of the early 1980s. It is very interesting reading, especially when reads the summary of the research topics with the eye of how far we have come, and how little we haven't. Throughout the report there is an aching need to understand how and why our communities use our bibliographic institutions. There are early stabs at trying to frame the potential impacts of multimedia and digital transmissions on what the authors term the "knowledge gap" in society (which they define through education mostly, and not the income lens of today's (information have and have nots".) Many of the proposed research topics also examine the economic implications of a "knowledge economy" and possible future roles libraries might play in economic and social contexts where they might compete with other community information distributors. Just the post card from the past to remind us how much the technology has changed, but how little the fundamental human aspects of our business remain as elusive as they were 25 years ago. Perhaps we should ask those who participated in the research to come back to the table and reflect on what remains of their effort -- much like the Miller Center of Public Affairs does for important public policy and legal issues -- such as climate change, the American President, and the National War Powers Commission. Perhaps they could do it digitally? The point being, I suppose, that if we don't remember, as a profession, what we suggest or recommend from one decade to another, than we are doomed to repetitive cycles that cover the same ground again and again. See you Day 40. Continue reading
Carl Malamud Featured in Wired Magazine
There is a great article about Carl Malamud and PACER over at Wired Magazine: "Online Rebel Publishes Millions of Dollars in U.S. Court Records for Free" by Ryan Singel.
Malamud says he's looking forward to the day he doesn't have to game the system. "If I had $10 million, I'd make a copy of all the documents and be done."I hear ya, Carl. I hear ya. Continue reading