Wanna blog for FGI?
Hi all! I'll be at the American Library Association (ALA) midwinter meeting in Seattle this weekend. Please come and see me (I'll be skulking around various GODORT sessions) if you'd be interested in being a future blogger of the month (BOTM). We lavish all our BOTMs with gifts, honorary titles and sceptors -- ok, we don't really do that, but you WILL get the center column on the site and we'd really be chuffed if you'd help us out!! You can also email us at admin AT freegovinfo DOT info. Continue reading
Privacy Podcast at the Thicket
The state-focused blog, The Thicket at State Legislatures is offering a roughly ten minute podcast on privacy that sounds interesting. The podcast highlights identity theft and state efforts to protect citizen privacy. Continue reading
Review of THOMAS beta
My first take on the THOMAS beta is now available online at LLRX.com -- specifically at http://www.llrx.com/columns/govdomain23.htm. (The full January issue of LLRX is not up yet, so you have to go directly to this URL.) The Library of Congress is looking for feedback, so be sure to use the THOMAS beta comment page if you have something to say. Continue reading
New EU study on open source
This one's going to take a while to completely absorb, but I'd highly recommend that everyone check out the new, enormous (287 pages!) and wide-ranging study of Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS). The report, financed by the European Commission’s Directorate General for Enterprise and Industry, was written by Rishab Ayer Gosh and an international, interdisciplinary team of researchers. Based on this report, The European Commission has issued an endorsement of open-source software. CNet's got the news on the report. Here's the PDF of the document, also attached below. The Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU exhaustively documents the way that Free/Open technologies dominate information technology and describes who actually writes Free/Open software. It also talks about what it would cost to replicate the benefits of Free/Open software through proprietary development (EU12 billion!), how many person years that would take (131,000!), and projects the total size of the Free/Open market in the years to come. This is the most authoritative study on Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) that I've seen to date. If you know of others, please post them to the comments. Continue reading
Real Government Transparency in New Zealand
Thanks to the Center for Media and Democracy's PR Watch for sharing this story from the Sydney Morning Herald contrasting the low amount of transparency in Australia government with a high degree of openness in New Zealand. Unlike Australia and America, NZ doesn't exempt whole catagories of information from disclosure:
The New Zealand Cabinet Manual states: "There is no blanket exemption for any class of papers under the Official Information Act 1982. Cabinet and Cabinet committee records are therefore covered by the Official Information Act in the usual way, and every request for Cabinet records must be considered on its merits against the criteria in the Act."In this country, both Presidents Clinton and Bush have argued that forcing disclosure of advice provided to the executive branch would impair good government. But in New Zealand, they see things differently:
It's impossible to imagine any senior Australian public servant adopting the advice of Marie Shroff, the New Zealand's secretary of cabinet and clerk of the Executive Council for 15 years, and now the Privacy Commissioner, who said: "If I, as a civil servant, write a Cabinet paper which I expect to be sought for public release I am going to be extraordinarily careful to get my facts right, to avoid trespassing into politics, to give comprehensive reasons for and against a proposal, and to think very carefully about my recommendations. My advice will therefore be balanced, accurate and comprehensive."As far as I know, NZ hasn't been hit with an existential crisis since their FOI (Freedom of Information) act was passed in 1983. Maybe we should consider a higher level of transparency! Continue reading