Act today to ask Bruce and Mike!
Update 10/18/2006, the archived session and the Q&A has been posted to the GCN web site. ------------------------ Tomorrow, Wednesday October 18, 2006, Government Computer News is hosting:
Online forum | Bruce James and Mike Wash Join us on October 18, 2006 1:00 PM through October 18, 2006 2:00 PM Guest: Bruce James, Government Printing Office chief executive officer and public printer Guest: Mike Wash, Government Printing Office chief technical officer Bruce James, Government Printing Office CEO and U.S. public printer; GCN's 2006 civilian executive of the year Government Printing Office chief executive officer and public printer Bruce James and chief technical officer Mike Wash will answer questions about how they moved the agency into the digital age. James, the GCN 2006 Civilian Executive of the Year, and Walsh will be available online on Oct. 18 from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. ET.Looks interesting, please join if you can. I'd like to point out that people can submit questions ahead of time to Mr. James and Mr. Wash and I strongly encourage you to do so. You can submit questions at http://www.gcn.com/forum/qna_forum/42282-3.html. You will need to give your name and State OR your City and State. You can give your e-mail address if you want the host and/or guest to contact you directly. The Q&A will be archived, so even if you can't attend the online forum, submitting a question would be a constructive act. I'd suggest that any questions follow these guidelines: - Be brief. - Ask a question rather than being a statement phrased as a question. - Be on a topic under GPO's control. - If you refer to a document, try to include the URL. That will help people accessing the Q&A later and show Mr. James and Mr. Wash that you are familiar with GPO documentation. That will make it harder for them to simply refer to material you may have already read. - Be polite. I believe that we should take this opportunity to ask questions about GPO's current and future practices, not to imply that one political party or the other has destroyed gov't information as we know it. One of the reasons that I hope there will be many intelligent and articulate questions from the documents community is that Government Computer News is read by many government IT types in federal, state and local government. If they see document users and specialists in constructive dialog asking questions that might not have occurred to them, it can only help us all. Good luck and good questioning to us all! Continue reading
Three new items on Digital Rights Management and Government Information
Two new documents and one news story outline the potential problems of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies, particularly to public information.
- Trusted Computing and Digital Rights Management Principles & Policies, New Zealand State Services Commission (September 2006, Version 1.0).
- Government should use DRM sparingly by Robert Gellman, Government Computer News (10/09/06).
- Evaluating DRM: Building a Marketplace for the Convergent World, The Center for Democracy and Technology (September 2006 – Version 1.0).
The New Zealand Government Principles and Policies document defines DRM this way.
"Digital rights management (DRM) is a set of technologies designed to apply and enforce persistent access restrictions to digital information, as specified by the information provider. Digital rights management can regulate the types of actions that can be done with information (for example, view, print, copy or modify) and the time frame in which that information remains accessible."
The New Zealand principles and policies were developed "in anticipation of the growing usage of trusted computing and digital rights management technologies. The aim of the principles and policies is to ensure that the use of trusted computing and digital rights management technologies does not adversely affect the integrity (including availability and confidentiality) of government-held information or related government systems."
Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies when applied to any content can limit access, prevent or limit use, endanger privacy, and make preservation and long term access difficult or impossible. When applied to government information, it can endanger citizen access to and use of public information and thus should be avoided. As governments increasingly use digital technologies as the only method of distribution of public information, there is a growing potential for use of DRM for a variety of reasons deemed legitimate by information distributors. When DRM technologies are used, even if the intended use is benign, the technology can impose unintended restrictions.
The Center for Democracy and Technology addresses DRM technology issues in general. Robert Gellman puts these two documents in context and comments on them.
Continue readingNot Just Blogs: Depository Library Council Vision
In our continuing our series of reminders that FGI is more than the FGI blog, we call your attention to the information and commentary we brought together about the Depository Library Council Vision. There you will find links to Daniel's comments on the four sections of the draft vision, a reprint of a comment by jajacobs on the "non-exclusive environment" and comments and suggestions from Jim Jacobs, James Jacobs and Shinjoung Yeo that were originally posted on the FGI blog. We will be providing new comments on the paper, Knowledge Will Forever Govern, the final version of the Depository Library Council vision paper. Watch for it here. Continue reading
New Feature! News Aggregator brings docs and tech news to FGI
This week FGI volunteers started a new feature, a news aggregator. We have loaded up a lot of news feeds from online magazines, blogs and a few from the Government Printing Office and brought them together in one place for you to read them. Just look for the "news aggregator" link on the left hand side of the home page. (Note from Jim: you can also access the aggregator by clicking on "In other news..." in the top toolbar!) The news aggregator gives you the option of reading all the sources we at FGI find useful, or reading just ones from these four catagories:
- Government Documents Blogs
- Government Technology
- Information focused government blog
- Organizations of interest to FGI
Part 19: Nonlawyer’s journey through Title 44: Use of Documents by Public Printer
This post, all earlier postings in this series, and my “not a lawyer†disclaimer can be found at http://freegovinfo.info/title44 or through our library under Nonlawyer's Journey through Title 44.
TITLE 44--PUBLIC PRINTING AND DOCUMENTS
CHAPTER 17--DISTRIBUTION AND SALE OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS
Sec. 1712. Documents for use of the Public Printer
The Public Printer may retain out of all documents, bills, and resolutions printed the number of copies absolutely needful for the official use of the Government Printing Office, not exceeding five of each.
(Pub. L. 90-620, Oct. 22, 1968, 82 Stat. 1281.)
Historical and Revision Notes
Based on 44 U.S. Code, 1964 ed., Sec. 81 (Jan. 12, 1895, ch. 23, Sec. 73, 28 Stat. 618).
This portion of the law makes it clear that the Government Printing Office (GPO) can retain documents for its own internal use. This portion of the law will come in handy has GPO digitizes materials still issued in paper and as it builds its National Collection.
I have to admit that I'm unsure of the history of the usage of this provision, which has been around since 1895, I imagine it was to have file copies available in case GPO was asked to provide a reprint. If someone else has better knowledge, I hope they will add something in comments.