Part-Time Policy Wonk

ALA Press Release:
In the fourth of a series of reports regarding technology access in U.S. public libraries, the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Research & Statistics (ORS) is highlighting how public library technology supports public access and use of e-government information and resources. The issues brief draws from national data published in the Public [...]

From the New York Times:
During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised that once a bill was passed by Congress, the White House would post it online for five days before he signed it. . .
. . . Five months into his administration, Mr. Obama has signed two dozen bills, but he has almost never waited [...]

From Federal Computer Week:
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has developed a homegrown social-networking application that provides all NASA employees with the types of features found in Facebook but in a secure environment.
Spacebook, which offers user profiles, group collaboration tools and social bookmarking, is available through NASA’s intranet, according to Linda Cureton, Goddard’s chief information officer, [...]

From the White House blog:
Last week, Vivek Kundra and Katie Stanton talked about the efforts underway to introduce more Web 2.0 technologies to the federal government sites and to open more back-and-forth communication between the American people and the government. Some of this naturally requires the adoption of new approaches and innovative technologies. But another [...]

From the Dallas Morning News:
The George W. Bush Presidential Library in University Park could be one of the last brick and mortar institutions of its kind.
Congress is looking for ways to cut the expense of overseeing such buildings, and some researchers say the traditional library setup for keeping presidential documents is outdated in a digital [...]

From the Washington Post:
The head of the State Department’s Office of the Historian has been reassigned after an inspector general’s investigation found “serious mismanagement for which the director must be held accountable.”
The office has been the subject of several years of internal and external conflict. A report by Harold W. Geisel, acting State Department inspector [...]

From NextGov:
The blogosphere is buzzing over last week’s report that Google head of global public policy Andrew McLaughlin will join the Obama administration as deputy chief technology officer under Aneesh Chopra. McLaughlin will be the third Googler to leave the company for the administration, following in the footsteps of Katie Jacobs Stanton, White House director [...]

From the Sunlight Foundation blog:
Yesterday I blogged that there was a glimmer of hope for S. 482, the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act. The bill had been hotlined which meant that unless a Senator objected, the bill would pass by unanimous consent of the Senate. Our cautious optimism was dashed when we learned that Sen. [...]