From Secrecy News:
A bipartisan resolution to provide online public access to Congressional Research Service reports was introduced in the Senate yesterday.
“The Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate, in consultation with the Director of the Congressional Research Service, shall make available through a centralized electronic system, for purposes of access and retrieval by the public … all information [...]
Archive of entries posted on December 2007
A Resolution on Internet Access to CRS Reports
The Sunlight Foundation’s Punch Clock Campaign
From the Sunlight Foundation:
Beginning in 2006, the Sunlight Foundation launched the Punch Clock Campaign, asking all candidates for congressional office – challengers and incumbents – to promise, if elected, to post their daily schedules on the Internet. Lawmakers who agree to share their schedules, including who they’ve met with and why, show that they are [...]
Share Your Bills With Our New Facebook App
From OpenCongress:
Now you can share the bills that matter to you in Congress with your friends on Facebook. Today we are launching our new Facebook app that lets you post bills to you profile, announce your support or opposition and comment on why you care about them. And, of course, the bills you post will [...]
E-Government 2.0: Improving Innovation, Collaboration, and Access
Hearing, U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. E-Government 2.0: Improving Innovation, Collaboration, and Access 12/11/07 10:00 AM (EST).
The hearing was broadcast live and will be available for viewing later here.
Witnesses Testimony is already available online as PDF documents:
• Karen S. Evans, Administrator, Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology , Office of Management [...]
Web Leaders Seek More Searchable Government
From the Washington Post:
These days you can Google just about anything, from your favorite celebrity’s pet to your boss’s middle name. But using the biggest search engine to get information about the government often falls short.
That’s what leaders from Google and Wikipedia plan to tell the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs today, [...]
Vital Government Information “Hiding in Plain Sight”
From the Center for Democracy & Technology:
CDT and OMB Watch today jointly released “Hiding in Plain Sight,” a report highlighting a critical gap in online access to vital government information. The report, presented to a Senate panel today, exposes a simple technological roadblock as the culprit and notes the problem has an equally simple technological [...]
Ask.com Puts a Bet on Privacy
From the New York Times:
Will privacy sell?
Ask.com is betting it will. The fourth-largest search engine company will begin a service today called AskEraser, which allows users to make their searches more private.
Ask.com and other major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft typically keep track of search terms typed by users and link them to [...]
ALA Reasserts Role of Libraries in E-government to U.S. Senate
ALA Press Release:
Today, in a statement to the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the American Library Association (ALA) addressed the critical yet unacknowledged role public libraries play in delivering E-government services to the American people.
Increasingly, government agencies refer individuals to their local public libraries for assistance and access to the Internet [...]
Report Describes Systematic White House Effort to Manipulate Climate Change Science
From the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee:
For the past 16 months, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been investigating allegations of political interference with government climate change science under the Bush Administration. During the course of this investigation, the Committee obtained over 27,000 pages of documents from the White House Council on [...]
States clammed up after 9/11
From Stateline.org:
The 2001 terrorist attacks led every state but South Dakota to restrict access to information deemed critical to homeland security — from architectural blueprints to emergency evacuation routes, according to a comprehensive, state-by-state study of post-9/11 changes to open-government laws.
Wary of terrorists, state lawmakers closed government meetings previously open to the public, denied residents [...]