From OpenCongress:
As Congress returns tomorrow to start a new session, OpenCongress is excited to announce a major update that will put all the bills and votes at your fingertips. It’s never been easier to track what’s happening with your government.
Now you can build a personal profile on OpenCongress of the bills and people you’re tracking, [...]
Archive of entries posted on January 2008
Announcing “My OpenCongress”: Network, Comment and Vote on Congress
EPA’s move to ‘modernize’ libraries spurs concerns
From Government Executive:
In response to a congressional mandate that the Environmental Protection Agency restore closed libraries, the agency said it will proceed with modernizing its library network, leading some people to believe the EPA will not resume physical library operations.
Molly O’Neill, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Environmental Information, issued a statement Monday that said, [...]
Pentagon Tackles Controls on Unclassified Information
From Secrecy News:
In a small step that could nevertheless have far-reaching consequences for government information policy, the Department of Defense is preparing to eliminate various markings such as “For Official Use Only” and “Limited Distribution” that regulate disclosure of unclassified documents and will replace them with a new standardized marking.
The DoD move (pdf) anticipates near-term [...]
Supreme Court Declines To Hear Orphan Works Case
From Library Journal:
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of Kahle v. Ashcroft, brought by Internet Archive and Open Content Alliance founders Brewster Kahle and Rick Prelinger in 2003, which challenged the constitutionality of the current copyright regime. Although not unexpected, the Supreme Court’s refusal comes after a recent ruling by the [...]
Nature makes genome chain officially free
From Information World Review:
Nature Publishing Group has introduced a Creative Commons licence for articles in scientific journal Nature that publish the primary sequence of an organism’s genome.
Nature already makes reports on genome sequences freely available for use by other researchers. The new licence formalises that arrangement, according to David Hoole, head of content licensing for [...]
My Friend Flickr: A Match Made in Photo Heaven
From the Library of Congress Blog:
. . . That’s why it is so exciting to let people know about the launch of a brand-new pilot project the Library of Congress is undertaking with Flickr, the enormously popular photo-sharing site that has been a Web 2.0 innovator. If all goes according to plan, the project will [...]
White House Admits No Back-Up Tapes for E-mail Before October 2003
From the National Security Archive:
In response to a federal court order issued last week, the White House late last night refused to acknowledge any missing e-mails, instead stating that it “has undertaken an independent effort to determine whether there may be anomalies in Exchange e-mail counts” during the 2003-2005 period. A sworn statement by the [...]
Global E-Government Survey 2008: From E-Government to Connected Governance
From the United Nations Online Network in Public Administration and Finance:
The UN E-Government Survey 2008: From E-Government to Connected Governance assesses the e-government readiness of the 192 Member States of the UN according to a quantitative composite index of e-readiness based on website assessment, telecommunication infrastructure, and human resource endowment. ICTs can help reinvent government [...]
Keeping Government Secrets: A Pocket Guide for Judges on the State-Secrets Privilege, the Classified Information Procedures Act, and Court Security Officers
From the Federal Judicial Center:
Most federal judges come into contact with classified information infrequently, if at all, but when they do, they are faced with the dilemma of how to protect government secrets in the context of an otherwise public proceeding. This pocket guide is designed to familiarize federal judges with statutes and procedures established [...]
Publishers Say Enactment of NIH Mandate on Journal Articles Undermines Intellectual Property Rights Essential to Science Publishing
From the Association of American Publishers:
The Association of American Publishers today criticized a controversial new NIH research publication policy that was enacted as part of the omnibus appropriations package for 2008, and reaffirmed that journal publishers who have opposed the policy will continue to pursue their concerns with Congress regarding the policy’s negative impact on [...]