In 2001, the GAO published a document entitled “Information Management; Electronic Dissemination of Government Publications” (pdf).
The GAO is responding to a congressional request for information on electronic documents dissemination, and ends up discussing the GPO, LOC, and FDLP in great detail. Apparently they considered transferring the FDLP from the GPO to the LOC.
Also, the […]

Over the last few days, there’s been a good deal of talk about the ethics requirements going into effect for Senate Committees.  Later today, the Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to reconcile the rules of their committee with the requirements of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, often referred informally as “the ethics reform […]

After going through the trouble of obtaining and digitizing the 1992 report on congressional documentation, I’ve started going systematically through the document, and, in an attempt to read more closely, have been taking notes.  This is a long post, but the parallels with the Open House Project are startling to me, as are the contrasts: […]

I’ve been on a mission, since November 14th, to find a digital copy of S.Pub 102-20, a reference document from 1990 giving a very comprehensive analysis of all public congressional information, from an archival perspective.  I’ve finally managed to digitize a copy (after some quality time at the scanner).  It is a large file.  (Click […]

This weekend an Open Government Working Group conference was held in Sebastopol, CA. It was very useful and productive. I didn’t think that I contributed as much as I should have, personally, but in any case… Sunlight’s Micah Sifry has a good write-up, so I won’t repeat all of those details. (It was great to […]

I’m glad to have just found the archive of old Web sites from members of Congress, maintained by the Center for Legislative Archives under the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
The collection seems well organized and easy to peruse, with solid explanations of their methodology and disclaimers about what’s available based on the crawling.
My main […]

I had the pleasure this morning of speaking at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for a panel on Innovative Advocacy (cohosted by Adfero).
While much of the discussion centered on best practices and ideas around (what seemed to me to be) more traditional advocacy, I tried to add some of my thoughts on what might make […]

Google has been working with federal agencies to help them ensure that their data are accessible through search engines. Many government databases providing critical information or statistics have existed for much longer than the current standards for public Internet accessibility, so the disconnect between search engines and public databases is understandable.
There is a clear […]

Broad access to fundamental data leads to compelling analysis. Here’s a TED talk from Hans Rosling, where he gives a tour of the recent history of countries becoming industrialized, using visualizations built on data from the UN.

The history of representative democracy and government is waiting to be similarly told; here’s a broad collection of […]

(pasted in from the google group, which has been especially active…)
After returning earlier this week from a trip to London to meet with mysociety.org, I’m starting to catch up on everything we’ve been up to.
Whips and Structured Data: For one, I’ve reached out to leadership on both sides to hopefully start a discussion about […]