Alaskan Newspapers Stand Against Private Weather – Do yours?
I was pleased to see an Anchorage Daily News editorial coming out strongly against Sen. Santorum's weather privatization (S. 786 ) bill reprinted in the Juneau Empire. It was especially pleasing to see that both papers agree on the central issue:
This is privatization ideology run amok. Critics note the public already has paid for weather information once, when the government collects it. It shouldn't have to pay some private sector middleman for the privilege of seeing it. Cost isn't the issue here. Thanks to the Internet, it costs the government very little to make information widely available. The issue is that a politician wants to hamstring a legitimate function of government so it's easier for somebody to make a buck. Let the nation's weather forecasters do their jobs without political interference. In Alaska, that work is particularly critical. Continue reading
Government investigates libraries
If digital government information is only available to the public through government-controlled web servers, will the government examine what people are reading? A recent study by the American Library Association may have some bearing on this question. As reported by the NY Times, law enforcement officials "made at least 200 formal and informal inquiries to libraries for information on reading material and other internal matters since October 2001." This raises the question: If the government is willing to examine what people read when it is difficult for them to do so, what will constrain them doing so when it is much easier to examine their own logs of web usage? Libraries Say Yes, Officials Do Quiz Them About Users. By Eric Lichtblau, New York Times June 20, 2005 Monday Late Edition - Final, Section A; Column 5; National Desk; Pg. 11. Also available here: U.S. libraries say agents are prying. By Eric Lichtblau, The New York Times International Herald Tribune, Tuesday, JUNE 21, 2005. Continue reading
Bill would privatize some USGS data
Congress Seeks to Privatize Some USGS Water Activities by Kris Christen. Chemistry.org, American Chemical Society. Reprinted from Environmental Science & Technology, June 8, 2005.
More of the data collection and analysis work conducted through the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) cooperative water program could be privatized under language in the U.S. House of Representative’s Department of the Interior fiscal year 2006 appropriations bill. Supporters of the privatization language say that it would stop USGS from competing with the private sector, but many environmental managers fear that important data collection efforts would be weakened.Continue reading
First in the nation state government podcast?
The Delaware Public Archives, part of the Delaware State Government does a podcast of its This Day in Delaware Historyseries. To my limited knowledge, this is the only state government sponsored podcast out there. Does anyone know of others? It would be nice if the Government Printing Office could start doing podcasts of either Bruce James or Judy Russell giving us a five minute rundown each week of new developments at GPO and/or the Federal Depository Library Program. Or even have the folks at the Office of Innovation and New Technology create a blog for them. Continue reading
Preservation is more than backup
June 26, 2005 / Leave a comment
This is an interesting article about digital preservation. The Fading Memory of the State By David Talbot. Technology Review (July 2005) It opens with a story about FBI director J. Edgar Hoover writing a memo in 1972 to an aide about a young historian suing for the release of old FBI files and asking "What do we know about Weinstein?" That's Allen Weinstein, who has just taken over as Archivist of the United States. This article continues, "It was a telling note about the mind-set of the FBI director and of the federal bureaucracy of that era. And it was saved--Weinstein later found the clipping in his own FBI file. But it's doubtful such a record would be preserved today, because it would likely be 'born digital' and follow a convoluted electronic path." The article describes the new nature of government information. Definitely worth reading! Continue reading →
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