The New York State Senate’s chief information officer team just launched an early version of their Open Legislation Portal today.

The site allows users to search for bills by sponsor, committee, recent actions, and recent votes. You can also search by keyword, like, say, “bicycle” and find relevant bills and data available in four different formats.

The Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP/PSP) today expressed its support and endorsement of a joint statement on the open access debate issued by two prestigious international organizations representing publishers and librarians. Designed to bring more light and less heat to the often contentious debate surrounding open access, the statement, entitled “Enhancing the Debate on Open Access,” was issued on May 20 by the International Publishers Association (IPA) and the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA). They were joined in releasing the statement by the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers.

When Google Earth added historical maps of Japan to its online collection last year, the search giant didn’t expect a backlash. The finely detailed woodblock prints have been around for centuries, they were already posted on another Web site, and a historical map of Tokyo put up in 2006 hadn’t caused any problems.
But Google failed to judge how its offering would be received, as it has often done in Japan. The company is now facing inquiries from the Justice Ministry and angry accusations of prejudice because its maps detailed the locations of former low-caste communities.

Directgov.com, the UK government’s one-stop supersite for citizens, has opened up idea generation by allowing developers around the country to share ideas on how to build a word-class online hub for all national government services. The Directgov site, which launched in 2004, reportedly receives more than 11 million visits a month.
Unlike President Obama’s digital initiative Change.gov (now Whitehouse.gov), which solicits ideas from citizens of all backgrounds on a range of topics, Directgov is recruiting ideas from the developer community for a specific challenge: how to make Directgov itself more innovative.

From the Sunlight Foundation blog:
U.K.’s Directgov.com rises to the occasion

Leena Rao at TechCrunch reports on how Directgov.com, the British government’s online portal providing information and services from across government, is asking developers to help them think of ways to make the site more innovative, responsive and open to input from citizens.
Yesterday they had such an opportunity. Much of the U.K. was hit by a rare major snowstorm, crippling pretty much evertyhing. U.K. Cabinet Office Minister and Member of Parliament Tom Watson reports that, as a parent, the only thing on his mind Monday at 7:30 a.m. was whether his son’s nursery school was open or closed. So he purchased a domain name (SchoolClosures.org.uk) and then twittered a challenge to the folks at Directgov.com, “Fancy rising to the challenge for tomorrow morning?” They quickly built http://schoolclosures.org.uk/, a working prototype of an online service to provide an open and easy way to report the status of local schools. “It is an amazing thing,” Tom wrote on his blog, “not just the tool but the way in which they have turned things around in about 28 hours.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that it will hold a roundtable on October 8 to discuss ways to modernize its disclosure system to give investors more useful and timely information for investment decision-making.
The roundtable is part of the SEC’s 21st Century Disclosure Initiative launched by SEC Chairman Christopher Cox in June. The roundtable’s discussions will help guide the Commission as it examines how the agency acquires disclosure information from public companies, mutual funds, and other market entities as well as how that information is being made available to investors and the markets.

The federal government’s new copyright legislation is expected to take a hard line on the use of circumvention devices that could mean consumers are effectively locked out of digital content they have already purchased.
Lobbyists familiar with the bill, expected to be tabled this week, say those who want the prohibition of circumvention devices to get around digital security to be limited to people who crack locks on copyrighted material to make multiple copies and sell them for commercial profit will be disappointed.
And this broad approach could brand as lawbreakers consumers who use circumvention devices to copy legally purchased material, including music and movies, for personal use.

In the wake of the OPEN Government Act of 2007, which amended the reporting requirements for agency Annual FOIA Reports, the Department of Justice, in consultation with the Office of Management and Budget, has revised both the content and the format of the Report and its corresponding guidelines. The revised guidelines, posted today, reflect the new statutory mandate. They also include new reporting requirements, including data on agency backlogs, which are an extension of the goals set forth in Executive Order 13,392, and are in furtherance of best practices in FOIA administration. The guidance also clarifies existing reporting requirements and further defines the type of requests to include in the Annual FOIA Report.

2008 Guidelines for Agency Preparation of Annual FOIA Reports

On Tuesday, May 6, 2008, Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein submitted a report, entitled The Founders Online, to the Committees on Appropriations of the U.S. Congress. This report is the National Archives response to concerns raised by the Committees that the complete papers of America’s Founding Fathers are not available online. The Founders Online is a plan for providing online access, within a reasonable timeframe, to researchers, students and the general public. The report is available electronically at the National Archives website.