Is anyone familiar with FDsys being developed by the GPO? From the website:
The status page has a fascinating run through the project’s expected development, including user profiles, file conversion, customizable alerts, and even a “collaborative working environment”. I wonder if this is directed towards the work of GPO, or towards the creation of government-wide documents that end up archived by the FDLP?
The GPO’s mission statement lists 3 main functions: (quoting)
“To provide the agencies and organizations which make up the three branches of the Federal government with expert publishing and printing services, on a cost recovery basis… To provide, in partnership with Federal Depository libraries, for nationwide community facilities for the perpetual, free and ready access to the printed and electronic documents… To distribute, on a cost recovery basis, copies of printed and electronic documents…to the general public.”
I wonder to what degree this is coordinated or overlaps with the functions of OMB or the GSA? (this may be another example of negotiated terrain.)The strategic vision suggests that the “digital information system” will “[catalogue and authenticate] all known Federal Government documents within the scope of FDLP, whether printed or born digital.” ( p.4)
This reworking of the FDLP may require new authorization, as envisioned, as page 9 says “GPO will also ask Congress to review proposed changes to the FDLP to determine whether or not new legislative authority is required.”
I also wonder about overlap between the new GPO envisioned FDLP and NARA, although I guess that depends on FDLP and NARA’s guidelines on what they preserve and maintain access to. The GPO vision also suggests the creation of “two collections, on in the East and one in teh West, which will hold all known tangible and electronic FDLP documents withdrawn on a controlled basis as a last resort when no circulating copy is available.” Is this a departure from the LOCKSS model of preservation (Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) and model of FDLP function outlined in FGInfo’s report Once and Future Federal Depository Library Program?
I don’t know. But there’s a lot of information about coordinating resources and understanding government agencies’ jurisdiction to process here.
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4 responses so far ↓
Daniel Cornwall // Jan 13, 2008 at 1:22 pm
“Is this a departure from the LOCKSS model of preservation (Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) and model of FDLP function outlined in FGInfo’s report Once and Future Federal Depository Library Program?”
FDSys, now called the Federal Digital System, is definitely a departure from the geographically dispersed system of the past. Traditionally, the role of the Government Printing Office has been acquisition and distribution. They acquired publications from agencies and distributed materials through the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and through their Sales program and network of GPO bookstores. Preservation of publications was largely left to depository libraries. Most, though not all, did a good job in the area of preservation to the point where documents deposited with the FDLP in 1900 are easily accessible today.
With FDSys, the GPO proposes to take over the preservation of all federal publications despite having no track record in doing so. This is what worries many in the depository library community — not that we won’t have jobs, but that the government is planning to put all of its preservation eggs in one basket.
FDSys as it is currently conceived will have some good points. The latest system requirements documents available at the website you cite indicate that people will be able to set up profiles of interest and have either full documents or records of documents e-mailed or ftp’d to them. This would be a degree of selectivity currently unavailable from GPO.
Overall though, my FGI (http://freegovinfo.info) colleagues and myself think that FDSys should be part of the solution, but not the entire solution. What I mean by this is that FDSys should push out documents to depository libraries and other institutions willing to locally house them. These institutions could then use LOCKSS or some other digital preservation mechanism to preserve these documents and provide access whenever federal servers were unavailable.
Another benefit of this plan would be to force an open process when a document was targeted for removal from the system. If FDSys were to become the sole official repository of federal documents, then removing a troublesome document would become a matter of flipping a switch with no public process.
Daniel Cornwall // Jan 13, 2008 at 1:44 pm
In my last comment, I forgot two things:
1) We at FGI have written a lot of FDSys and our articles on the subject can be found by visiting http://freegovinfo.info/search/node/FDSys . The list isn’t sorted by date, my apologies for that.
2) You asked about overlap between FDSys and NARA. Based on my understanding, GPO is concerned with published materials. These materials may be published for everybody or just inside the government, but they will be materials prepared for publication. NARA is concerned with government records, including e-mail, memorandums and the like. So I would believe that there will not be much overlap between NARA’s holdings and what is in FDSys.
Finally, I should mention that what will be held in FDSys will be more than what is in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). FDSys is intended to be a comprehensive repository of all (or nearly) all federal publications. Not all of these fall under the FDLP. There are exemptions to what is included in the FDLP and I discuss some of those at http://freegovinfo.info/node/483.
Thank you for addressing these issues in a non-library forum.
James Jacobs // Jan 14, 2008 at 11:27 am
I’ve been tracking FDSys since the start and my FGI buddy Daniel posted a good reply to that post. While the FDsys sounds like a good thing with all the proper buzzwords, we’re worried that FDsys will be used to monetize govt information. The outgoing public printer, Bruce James, pushed for GPO to be self-sustaining like the post office. When gpoaccess first came out, they tried to make it a payment system too. It failed miserably and they opened it up for universal access shortly after that. But the public comments from the public printer have not changed. So our worry is that DRM will be instituted, the public will have low-res access but will have to pay for functionality and will not be able to reuse govt information.
On the other hand, Mike Wash, GPO’s CTO for FDsys, has been very responsive, seems to want to facilitate document export (single or bulk), open standards, and open source development.
However, it’s not clear at this point in time who’s going to win out: the ones that want to monetize GPO and put controls on govt information or the ones that want to facilitate open govt and free and open access to govt information.
I urge you all to read “Government Information in the Digital Age: The Once and Future Federal Depository Library Program” (http://freegovinfo.info/fdlp_digital), read the issues that we’ve mapped out (http://freegovinfo.info/issues), read through the FDsys blog (http://fdsys.blogspot.com/) and contact Mike Wash and the GPO with your concerns, ideas, needs for free flow of govt information in open formats etc.
Governmental Support Entities with a Role in Transparency: Statutory Basis for Negotiated Terrain | The Open House Project // Jan 23, 2008 at 4:15 pm
[…] In order to clarify this post, I wanted to organize some of the governmental support agencies and bodies with responsibility or jurisdiction over congressional information access. This list is still probably partial, as any such list would be, since jurisdiction and responsibility are ultimately a matter of habit and practice as much as they are statutory mandate, appropriations, or formal jurisdiction. […]
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