Two additions to Remix page
I've added two new items to our Remixes page.
- OpenCongress, which was covered before by Peggy Garvin (Congress Remix: OpenCongress.org Launched)
- An article about mashups and remixes, etc.: Mashups, Blogs, Wikis Go Federal, by Laura Gordon-Murnane, Searcher (March 2007) Vol. 15 Issue 3, p33-39. [subscription required] and its free list of links [no subscription required]. "The article focuses on the creation of mashups, blogs and wikis that deal with issues concerning the U.S. government. FedSpending.org is a resource maintained and operated by OMB Watch that enables anyone to see what fundings the U.S. Congress has appropriated in the form of contracts and grants. The Sunlight Foundation has established Sunlight Labs as a pilot project to develop technological ideas to improve government transparency and political influence discourse. The library at the North Carolina State University in Raleigh has put together a U.S. Congressional Committees Meeting Index."
Thanks to Peggy and her article! GovTrack and OpenCongress Go Beyond THOMAS, By Peggy Garvin, "The Government Domain," LLRX.com March 18, 2007.
Continue readingOMB Earmark database
The Office of Management and Budget is putting data on earmarks online, but not as quickly as originally announced.
- Earmarks data now set to go online in phases, by Aliya Sternstein, GlovExec.com, March 12, 2007
The White House Office of Management and Budget published some information on spending earmarks to the Internet late Monday -- a departure from the detailed disclosure that OMB outlined earlier this year.
The OMB website, Earmarks, says "This database is not designed, and cannot accurately be used, to identify the individual sponsors of congressional earmarks.... The information currently available is a work in progress and will be updated in the coming weeks (most recent update: March 25, 2007)."
Continue readingNew GAO Report on FOIA
The GAO released a report today on FOIA entitled "Processing Trends Show Importance of Improvement Plans." [PDF] From the "Highlights" page:
The improvement plans submitted by the 25 agencies mostly included goals and timetables addressing the four areas of improvement emphasized by the Executive Order: eliminating or reducing any backlog of FOIA requests; increasing reliance on dissemination of records that can be made available to the public without the need for a FOIA request, such as through posting on Web sites; improving communications with requesters about the status of their requests; and increasing public awareness of FOIA processing. Most of the plans (20 of 25) provided goals and timetables in all four areas; some agencies omitted goals in areas where they considered they were already strong. Although details of a few plans could be improved, all the plans focus on making measurable improvements and form a reasonable basis for carrying out the goals of the Executive Order.Continue reading
White House eschews email
Despite a huge DOJ documents dump to the Committee on the Judiciary concerning the US Attorney firings, it's come to light that the White House is now abstaining from using the official White House email system. Crooks and Liars has more and points out that this subverts the Presidential Records Act which mandates thorough record-keeping, and ironically, as Josh Marshall has pointed out, means that much of this "official" communication can not be shielded by executive privilege. Read on... Continue reading
GPO’s Budget and Priorities
April 1, 2007 / Leave a comment
The news of the Government Printing Office's (GPO) funding for next year is not encouraging. After flat-funding in 2006 and 2007, Congress is now considering the GPO budget for 2008. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee's Legislative Branch Subcommittee, said that the focus has to be on GPO's mission of printing first and foremost, and the transformation aspects, while still important, are secondary. "What happens to the systems if we can't fund it?" she asked.
At a time when 92 percent of all documents are available online Mike Wash, GPO's chief technical officer, said that accessibility will not be hampered. We might amend that by saying "accessibility will not be hampered...yet." Wash did say that the plans to add capabilities could be affected.
Here at FGI, we've often argued that it is a bad idea to rely on a single government agency (i.e., GPO) to provide the "single authoritative source" for "permanent preservation for public access" to all Federal documents (A strategic vision for the 21st century). One reason for our concern is that inadequate funding of GPO could reduce or even eliminate access to information that is essential to citizens. Every agency must pick and choose and set priorities and Congress must set priorities among all government programs. That is simply the way things are. As we noted elsewhere:
If GPO can't get funding in 2008 for transformation and adding capabilities, will it be able to always keep online everything that citizens need or everything that is important to your library's users? Or will it "come down to priorities" for what is kept freely available and what is taken offline or what becomes available "on a cost recovery basis" (A strategic vision for the 21st century)? Will we find those pointers in our OPACs pointing to a message that says "not enough funding to keep this online" -- or pointing to the GPO bookstore?
We may find that one of GPO's original planning documents was prescient when it said that it would maintain information online for "as long as usage warrants" (Electronic Information Access and Dissemination Services of the Federal Depository Library Program). When it comes down to priorities (and it will -- it already is), if we only have one "authoritative source", it will be Congress and GPO that decide what is "warranted" and what is not.
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