A new site we’ll be watching has been launched by Aaron Swartz, called theinfo.org.  Aiming to connect data wranglers of all sorts to each others’ complementary skills, he breaks data management into three areas, labeled “get”, “process”, and “view”.  As someone passionate about collaborative potential, I enjoy reading this: “We’ve all been helping to build […]

You should proceed as soon as possible to check out the Library of Congress’s page on flickr, as announced this morning.
It’s an awesome collection of about 3,000 images, of the quality you’d expect from the world’s largest library.  It’s wonderful to see them available the same way we expect to share images with each other, […]

The Time’s The Caucus blog reports that Kucinich got an injunction against MSNBC excluding him from their debate airing now (which was a change from their initial position of including him), which was subsequently (of course) protested by MSNBC. I don’t know where things stand now except that the debate is happening now without Kucinich.
I […]

The 2007 Gold Mouse Report from the Congressional Management Foundation has been posted, as covered in The Hill.
The report gives detailed criticism and praise for individual congressional Web sites, each year, and praise from CMF is well respected on the Hill.

Is anyone familiar with FDsys being developed by the GPO? From the website:
The Office of the Chief Information Officer is working to develop GPO’s Digital Information System (FDsys). As outlined in the Strategic Vision, FDsys will allow federal agencies to easily create and submit content that can then be preserved, authenticated, managed and delivered […]

I always find it interesting how although our government is run by fairly strict procedural rules that have been written out in various places, starting with the constitution and ending somewhere past the horizon, sometimes it’s just impossible to locate exactly at what point in the procedural game “reality” is. For instance, the constitution outlines […]

A quick post for an important point.
Access to information is often referred to as “necessary for a healthy democracy,” or the “foundation of an informed citizenry.”
I think both of those things are true, but I would assert that notion more strongly.  Broad access to public information is a precondition for sound policy, responsive government, and […]

I’m reading Politics in Time by Paul Pierson (link), and am struck by how little academic political science seems to affect government policy and political discussion. I find political and social analysis incredibly stimulating, especially given how tiresome I find the current presidential punditizing.
I’m particularly interested in Pierson’s purportedly novel conception of how political […]

As we’re looking through the reforms of the last year, I realized that the Office of Technology Assessment provision was recently passed in the consolidated omnibus appropriations bill. We pushed for the OTA’s reinstatement, and previously wrote about its impending passage.
Here’s the current relevant text, from govtrack, of HR 2764, the “Consolidated Appropriations Act […]