Expect Resistance & Library Autonomous Zone

Those White House Links to Nothing,
by Helen Dewar and Brian Faler.
Washington Post, October 25, 2004 Monday
Final Edition.A Section; A06.

The list of names of countries supporting the U.S.-led military action in Iraq has been removed from the White House Web site. Blogger Brad Friedman, who
noticed the disappearance, believes this is part of a widespread “scrubbing” of documents on the government site. Gone are links to the audio and video of President Bush’s statement that “I’m not that concerned” about Osama bin Laden, a Q&A when Bush said “misunderestimate” and Bush’s acknowledgment that his decision making on stem cell policy was “unusually deliberative for my administration.”

The White House explanation?
“When we republish pages and move files, some links are bound to go down, and there are bound to be dead pages.” And, “This coalition list was dated and inaccurate.”

So, has anyone at the White House heard of history?
Is GPO saving these and making them permanently available? Is GPO depositing these with depository libraries?
Are we better informed?

Senate Chairman Refuses to Release Richard Clarke’s Testimony
OMB Watch
Published: 10/18/2004.

For almost four months Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has refused to release declassified testimony related to the 9/11 investigation from former White House Counterterrorism Chief Richard Clarke. Given the critical nature of Clarke’s public statements and the proximity of elections, political motivations for the repression are strongly suspected.

XML.com: Stuck in the Senate.
by Paul Ford, XML.com,
October 13, 2004.

In this second article in a series, Ford looks at how to use
RDF (Resource Description Framework) to describe people (in this case, Senators), their roles, and their offices using XML. Why, you ask?

…[T]here is, I think, an important distinction between the Semantic Web and the Web As We Know It (WAWKI). The Semantic Web is about defining data in a consistent, accurate way, so that it can be shared by machines and by humans. The WAWKI is about moving human-friendly representations of resources from one place to another, and the focus on semantic consistency (in the form of XML, XHTML, and related standards) came after the basic architecture was established. The goal of this column is not to build a “Semantic Web site” because such a thing doesn’t really exist. Rather, we’re aiming to build a useful knowledge base of information about a specific domain, to publish that knowledge base on the Web, so that agents, both human and machine, can use the data in ways that aids them in accomplishing their goals and plans.

Center for Democracy and Technology: Spyware

Only a week after my home computer got infected (grrr!!), the House yesterday passed H.R. 4661: The Internet Spyware Prevention Act. The measure would impose criminal penalties for entities that secretly deploy the software, which tracks consumers’ Internet habits.

The Senate Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Subcommittee on Communications has also passed S.2145, an anti-spyware bill. At the state level, CA governor Schwarzenegger signed into law on Sept 28, 2004 the Consumer Protection Against Spyware Act

Is Network Outage Information a Terror Threat?
By Caron Carlson. eWeek,
October 4, 2004.

After more than a decade of making reports of telecommunication outages available to the public, the FCC in August ruled that the information will be kept secret.

The policy reversal reflects a larger practice in post-9/11 Washington of demanding an ever-increasing amount of data from corporate America while holding back information from the public. The government will know what’s happening in the networks, but for businesses seeking to compare network performance and service availability, there no longer will be objective data to consult.

Private Company to Oversee Database on Public Contracts
By David Zucchino
Los Angeles Times.
October 1, 2004. Part A; Pg. 15.

The General Services Administration, which maintains government databases on federal contracts, will turn over control of all contractor data to a Virginia-based company today. The agency says the new arrangement will provide information about contracts to Congress, the news media and the public more efficiently, cheaply and accurately.

Some members of Congress and independent experts have criticized the change, saying it could increase costs and eliminate direct public access to information about billions of dollars in federal contracts.

More information:
Procurement data to be free to most
by Michael Hardy. Federal Computer Week
Aug. 30, 2004.

the California State Library, in partnership with the Metropolitan Cooperative Library System has been involved in a project over the past year to evaluate the current California state document depository library program and begin planning for development of a digital repository system for California state government publications and published information. As part of this project, a research study by Judith Cobb and Gayle Palmer of the OCLC Digital Collections and Metadata Services Division was issued last week. This study provides an overview of the current publishing environment in California state government and the depository library program, and presents models and recommends action in several areas, including partnerships, legislative change, copyright considerations, data capture and management, digital preservation, governance, funding and sustainability.

The report is available on the CA State Library’s web site (PDF).

On the plus side, the OCLC study calls for a revamping of the CA depository system with the goal of a digital repository of CA state documents. Surprisingly, though, the study calls for a 9-15 year timeline for implementation.

California To Set P2P Policy

Governor Schwarzenegger signed executive order S-16-04 last week charging the state CIO, Clark Kelso, with setting up a policy on statewide use of P2P technologies. While the order mentions legitimate uses of P2P, it looks to me like the RIAA and MPAA have his ear. P2P is already being used for legitimate purposes across the UCs and the state. LOCKSS relies on P2P as do many other projects. IT departments everywhere rely on bit torrent to download critical patches and updates to webservers and OS’s.

Concerned? Write early and often to the Governor and CIO Kelso. Kelso mentions in the article that he’d like to have a policy in place by the end of the year. They need to hear how the technology is already being used and that any limitation on legitimate use would adversely (and economically!) affect organizations across the state.

CoolGov

“Jon and Elizabeth” list “neat” U.S. government information they find.

Thanks to Cory

Global E-Government, 2004 Full Report

Here’s the fourth annual update on global e-government from the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University. The groups did a detailed analysis of 1,935 government websites in 198 different nations undertaken during Summer, 2004 to see how e-government is unfolding around the world. They also compared their findings from 2001 - 2004. It’s also available in PDF but unfortunately, the raw data must be purchased.

Websites are evaluated for the presence of various electronic features, such as online publications, online databases, audio clips, video clips, foreign language or language translation, advertisements, premium fees, user payments or fees, disability access, several measures of privacy policy, multiple indicators of security policy, presence of online services, the number of online services, digital signatures, credit card payments, email addresses, comment forms, automatic email updates, website personalization, PDA accessibility, quality control, and readability level.