e-Government Perspective in Florida
The message that US libraries are increasingly seen as government information/service centers is spreading through the regular media. At least that's the impression that I get from this Florida Times-Union column: Libraries are expected to be our e-government service By DONNA PAZ KAUFMAN I like the way the column ends after explaining the lack of financial support for the nation's libraries:
As engaged citizens and civic leaders, it is time to acknowledge that the trend continues to point to technology for efficiencies in government and convenience for citizens - and this makes good sense. Yet when government services, educational institutions, medical programs and disaster programs rely on public libraries for support, the libraries need to be prepared to respond. Librarians are trained to provide assistance. It's what they do. But until public libraries are recognized for the greater role they've been fulfilling since the advent of information technology, the wait in line or on the phone will be that much longer.More anecdotal evidence that even when information and services are online, brick and mortar places increase their usefulness. Continue reading
Iraq survival guide online, but not public. Print may be coming?
Iraq survival guide now online, by Gina Cavallaro, Army Times (Jan 30, 2007) According to this story:
[A]n electronic version of a new handbook for soldiers on how to survive their first 100 days in Iraq can be seen online. Deploying soldiers are encouraged to log in with their Army Knowledge Online passwords to the Center for Army Lessons Learned at http://call.army.mil and review the guidelines gleaned from more than 1,700 soldiers who responded to a survey six months ago. A paper version for basic trainees was supposed to be issued by January, but has been held up at the Government Printing Office until sometime in February.Continue reading
White House Quietly Retracts Entire SOTU
According to a reputable media outlet, The White House has retracted the entire State of the Union address! (I couldn't resist :-) ) Continue reading
e-Government in Argentina – who’s reading?
Thanks to the blog BiblioTICando con humor (blog bibliotecario por Diana RodrÃguez), I became aware of this paper about eGovernment in Argentina: Gobierno Electronico: donde esta parada la Argentina? by Paula Nahirnak. IF I understand this paper correctly, it has some very interesting things to say. I say IF because my understanding of it is formed by my approximate 5th grade Spanish level plus hints from Google Translate. So, if any fluent Spanish speakers would look over this six page document and let me know if I've gone wrong, I'd be grateful. The paper appears to focus on the delivery of government services and information by Argentina's provincal government. A year and a half ago the provinces were given a decree by the central government to undertake electronic activities. For reasons I can't translate well enough to understand, the authors of the article graded provinces by how well these four classes of information were web posted:
- Information regarding provincal debt.
- Provincial budgetary law.
- Information about the budget.
- Information about tax collection.
From a table it looks like performance in these categories significantly improved from 2002 to 2006, and especially after 2005. The article also references a 2005 article, Global E-Government 2005 by Darrell M. West and from what I can tell, Argentina ranted with countries like Spain, Lithuania, Korea, Iraq(!), Romania and a few others. What I find really fascinating about the article, again if I understand it correctly, is that I'm not sure who this electronic information is actually for. Page five of the article has a chart of public employees by province who have access to computer equipment. Even the top rated area, the capital of Buenos Aries, only 51% of the government's own workers have access to computers! The median for the country seems to be 26.7%. So almost three quarters of Argentina's government workers cannot access the web posted information from their employer. On the last page of the article is a table expressing access to home Internet connections in terms of people to one Internet connection. The capital again wins out with "just" five people per Internet connection. Nationwide average is 26 people per Internet connection and in the NEA y Litoral province, there are 83 people for every home Internet connection. So I don't think most people at home could get much out of Argentina's drive to put government information and services on the Web. Perhaps their citizens are going to libraries. But as I've said, this is MY reading. If you have a better one, please let us know in comments. But it does look like the digital divide is hard at work all over the planet. So how do we help the 30% or so of Americans here at home w/o Internet access get their government information?
Continue readingFirst International Workshop on Database Preservation
The announcement for First International Workshop on Database Preservation (PresDB'07) has been posted to the relevant mailing lists, so you may have already seen it, but it is worth taking a moment to reflect on the need for this workshop and the relevance to government information and depository libraries.
While considerable thought has been given in the past to the preservation of fixed "digital objects", the preservation of databases, which have an internal structure and which may change over time, poses new challenges. Typically databases are centrally managed, and their survival depends on the viability of commercial organisations or the continued public funding of data centres. Libraries, the traditional curators of scientific and scholarly reference material, have largely abrogated their archival responsibility to databases.Continue reading