PDF is now ISO standard
PDF (Portable Document Format) has been approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The new standard is ISO 32000-1.
ISO 32000-1:2008 specifies a digital form for representing electronic documents to enable users to exchange and view electronic documents independent of the environment in which they were created or the environment in which they are viewed or printed. It is intended for the developer of software that creates PDF files (conforming writers), software that reads existing PDF files and interprets their contents for display and interaction (conforming readers) and PDF products that read and/or write PDF files for a variety of other purposes (conforming products).See also: PDF now ISO standard, By Joab Jackson, GCN, 07/03/08.
With Adobe relinquishing control of PDF, the ISO Document Management Applications Technical Committee will review any changes made to the format. The openly published standard provides the technical information required for writing software programs that can create and read PDF files, ensuring that organizations will always have some tools available to render PDFs, even if Adobe stops shipping its PDF viewer.PDF/A (Electronic document file format for long-term preservation) was approved by ISO earlier. Continue reading
District of Columbia provides live data feeds
I had not seen this before, but it looks like a model for open government. The District of Columbia provides free access to "city operational data" (e.g., Demographics, Health Care, Environment, Human Services, Education, Economic Development, Public Safety) in a variety of formats including RSS (Atom) feeds, XML, CSV, and ESRI Shapefiles. The feeds are drawn from more than 150 data sets, ranging from the all- important crime reports to pothole complaints. DC Data Catalog and Data Feeds Continue reading
Declaration of Independence
On this July Fourth, I was pleased to find that the Cornell University Law School Legal Information Institute blog, LII Announce, quoted this paragraph from the Declaration of Independence, number 4 of the many grievances listed by the colonists against the King:
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.And of this passage, they say:
That the colonists should consider a complaint about informational distance to be on a par with the dissolution of the legislatures, imposition of unfair taxes, and the lack of a judiciary is revealing. These days, the de facto depository of our public records is the Internet, no longer physically distant but perhaps equally fatiguing in other ways. Outmoded publishing policies and practices -- and a failure to recognize the public need for legal information -- keep us at a remove from our public legal information that is greater than it should be. We're a click away in theory, but the practical distance is much greater.Thanks to Tom for the tip on the OpenHouseProject mailing list. Continue reading
-- The Glorious Fourth, by Charles Macklin, LII Announce, July 4, 2008.
Test your political IQ
So you think you're a [w:policy wonk]? Well, why don't you take the Sunlight Foundation's PoliQuiz, an interactive, multiple choice political trivia game. Or better yet, play the game below as part of the Freegovinfo team? Everyone who plays PoliQuiz on freegovinfo.info will have their scores associated with the Freegovinfo team. Help us climb up the team leaderboard!
Nuclear vault: 40th anniversary of Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty
On 1 July 1968, the United States, the United Kingdom, the former Soviet Union, and over 50 other countries signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), one of the most significant multilateral arms control achievements of the nuclear age. Today, 187 countries have joined the treaty and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is entrusted with the key role as the international safeguards inspectorate. To commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the signing of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), the National Security Archive has opened up the nuclear vault and published their briefing book, "The Impulse towards a Safer World", a thorough and intriguing history of "one of the most significant multilateral arms control achievements of the nuclear age" along with declassified U.S. government documents on the process of negotiations. The documents highlight...
...the dialogue between and among U.S. officials (negotiators, diplomats, and policymakers) and representatives of Asian-Pacific, European, and Latin American governments, these documents highlight the range of problems that made the U.S., the Soviet Union, and other governments want to negotiate an NPT, but also which it so difficult to negotiate and to win unanimous adherence to the nonproliferation system.Continue reading