A quick post to point out something I’ve noticed.  Open communications structures lead to expanded roles, which leads to unusual allegiances that form outside formalized power structures.  For this reason, the Open House Project has seen alliances between all of the following despite the immensely different incentives under which they function:

New Media Staff
IT staff
administrators
politicians from […]

The GAO has just released a report on the development of the Electronic Records Archive under the National Archives and Records Administration.
The ability to find, organize, use, share, appropriately dispose of, and save
records—the essence of records management—is vital for the effective
functioning of the federal government. In the wake of the transition from
paper-based to electronic processes, […]

(from Sunlight)
Ars Technica has an article up about the “hyperconnected”–defined by the Interactive Data Corporation as those people for whom the line between work and personal has been blurred to the point that they’re “willing to communicate with work on vacation, in restaurants, from bed, and even in places of worship.”
The article offers some criticism […]

The Library of Congress has published a new Digital Preservation Newsletter (pdf), via ResourceShelf.

It touches on OOXML, the PDF/A format, NDIIPP Partnerships, and the MetaArchive Cooperative.
To subscribe to their newsletter, go here.

(via this post)

As distributed and online-based media develop into a more effective counterbalance, will the “traditional” media’s public value to decrease even further?

Via OpenCRS, here’s a new Congressional Research Service Report about CRS. It outlines basic legislative structures from an unusually thoughtful perspective.

I just discovered DARPA’s Policy Analysis Market project. The idea has me wondering what the place is for market based deliberations solutions, and when it’s appropriate to give actors a self-incentive that isn’t already inherent to a situation. There’s a strong argument to be made for the predictive power of markets, […]

This afternoon I attended a talk by Aneesh Chopra, the Secretary of Technology for Virginia, hosted by New Media Strategies. Chopra described his rather unusual job, a sort of newly styled state-CIO position, and gave us his vision for government and the development of the surrounding areas in the process. Chopra began by […]

From Congress Daily, on IG reform: p. 12, monday may 5, 2008.  My review of this issue is available here.

House and Senate negotiators might start talks this week over separate versions of legislation aimed at ensuring the independence of federal inspectors general, though staffers said a deal is unlikely before budget discussions […]

(cross posted from Sunlight)
In the month since PublicMarkup.org launched, we’ve gotten 121 comments on our draft reform legislation, the Transparency in Government Act of 2008. The media and blog coverage has been overwhelmingly favorable, but not without a healthy dose of skepticism.
The main questions we’ve faced attempt to locate the bill within a traditional […]