GAO report finds privacy compliance “haphazard”
GAO: Privacy issues remain in data mining programs When visiting an agency Web site, personal information may be collected and mined, a recent GAO report found. Some agencies comply with federal privacy regulations, but some, like the General Services Administration claim that the Privacy Act doesn’t apply to its system and that it has taken "adequate security measures."
A sampling of data mining programs in several federal agencies has found that implementing privacy and security measures is haphazard, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office. Of five data mining programs at five different agencies, “none followed all key procedures†for privacy and security measures, GAO said. The report, titled “Data Mining: Agencies Have Taken Key Steps to Protect Privacy in Selected Efforts, but Significant Compliance Issues Remain,†(PDF) examined programs at the Small Business Administration, the Agriculture Department’s Risk Management Agency, the IRS, the State Department and the FBI. Continue reading
BIA has no Web site
It's true! The Bureau of Indian Affairs Web site and mail servers have been "made temporarily unavailable due to the Cobell Litigation. Please continue to check from time to time. We have no estimate on when authorization will be given to reactivate these sites." According to "Interior Monologue," by Meghann Farnsworth in the September/October 2005 Issue of Mother Jones, the employees of BIA have had no web access and no email. A Judge revoked the agency's internet privileges in response to the agency's gross mismanagement of Indian land trust records and funds.
The BIA has been stuck in this techno-logical time warp since 2001, when the federal judge overseeing Cobell v. Norton punished the bureau for failing to safeguard its Indian land trust records. Court-appointed experts had hacked into the bureau's files, concluding that "protecting trust funds is not now, and has never been, a 'priority.'" In response, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth revoked the BIA's Internet privileges until it cleaned up its act. Continue reading
Preview of Capturing Electronic Documents on the Last Frontier
Since I've been mentioning my and other FGI volunteer talks at the Nevada Library Association Annual Conference, I thought I'd share my handout from my "Capturing e-docs on the last frontier talk." I find this outline especially worthwhile to mention here because it touches on the notion of digital deposit for a state depository program. Disclaimer - This is not a proposed solution for Federal Depository Library Program. I don't believe that what I'm doing or planning to do in Alaska would scale to the vastly larger volume of federal documents. But I hope it will be food for thought. And now, the handout... ----------------------------------------- Capturing E-Docs on the Last Frontier Presented by Daniel Cornwall, Alaska State Library to the Nevada Library Association, October 2005 History Alaska has been collecting “Internet Only†state publications since 1998. We went from manual harvesting in 1998 to automated harvesting in May 2002 with Teleport Pro to automated harvesting using the Illinois State Library commissioned Capturing Electronic Publications starting in August 2004. Continue reading
Continued need for print distribution from government
If you read my govdoc-l posting on this topic on October 12, 2005, there's not much new here other than a few more links. I'm offering these thoughts here because Free Government Information does have readership outside of the govdoc-l community. As part of the government information community takes this week to consider the future of government information, I wanted say a few words about the need to continue the option of tangible (i.e. print and microfiche) distribution for which agencies still produce a tangible product. Print is still used and needed. "Wait, Wait! Congress decided awhile back that everything was going to be digital only. Besides the gov't can't afford it!" I'm not talking today about what is politically convenient or easily affordable. I'm talking about needs. For example, it is neither easy nor cheap to provide medical care to the poorest Americans through Medicaid, but the need is there. Our nation may choose not to meet that need, but that doesn't make the need go away. Ok? Continue reading
Presentations on homeland security and library promotion added to Fall 2005 DLC page
We have updated our Fall 2005 Depository Library grassroots proceedings page with two sets of presentation slides linked to FGI by permission of the authors. Our thanks to presenters James Shaw and Greta Marlatt for sharing their content with Free Government Information prior to close of Council. If you presented at the Depository Library Council/Federal Depository Library Program Conference and would like to see your presentations available here at FGI, please drop me an e-mail at dnlcornwall AT alaska.net with either your presentation files or your presentation URL. Letting us host your files does NOT preclude you from also sharing them with the Government Printing Office. Have a comment about these presentations or about the meeting in general? Just use the "add comment" link at the bottom of this page or at the bottom of the conference page! Continue reading