• New Media Staff
• IT staff
• administrators
• politicians from the left and right
• bloggers
• technologists
• non-profits
• business figures
• lobbyists (well, some lobbyists)
• citizen advocates
• public interest advocates
• academics

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, records are increasingly electronic,
and the volumes of electronic records produced by federal agencies are
vast and rapidly growing, providing challenges to NARA as the nation’s
recordkeeper and archivist.

This may be connected to yesterday’s Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee NARA oversight hearing. (whose testimony I haven’t had a chance to read yet…)

Update:  check out the testimony from the HSGAC hearing, looks like the ERA oversight was probably requested of GAO.

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 of the purportedly overworked, suggesting offhandly that the hyperconnected will pose new challenges for IT departments, and possibly have questionable effects on workers’ personal lives.

While these concerns over productivity and relaxation are certainly valid, there’s another side of merging personal and workplace that’s ignored by the commentary: the same breakdown that leads to work email being written in bed also leads to the breakdown of the limitations on the role of the “professional”.  Just as communications technology leads to more work being done at home, the Internet allows for the intellectual entrepeneurship of the online volunteer researcher, the blog-based organizer, the midnight advocate.  As Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody makes clear, individuals who can organize without centralized leadershp form a new, powerful, agile force, harnessing what has been dubbed the “cognigitive surplus” to redefine the way we organize our ideas and ultimately ourselves.

While this may have some effect on the modes of our relaxation, the effects on business, government, and society will more than make up for them.

(full disclosure: I often work in the middle of the night.)

It touches on OOXML, the PDF/A format, NDIIPP Partnerships, and the MetaArchive Cooperative.

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

We have failed to tap the hidden talent of the uncredentialed.

I’ve tried to say this before in other ways–distributed expertise is disconnected from policy creation, etc–but his formulation captures the real potential for transparent and receptive institutions. Chopra sees analysis from bloggers as having huge potential for stimulating reform (and should check out the Open House Project), and, as I often do, bemoans the focus on the political and wonders about people’s capacity to add to substantive policy debate and deliberation. His plan to integrate public policy ideas amounts to a small e-suggestions box for now, but Chopra is certainly deeply involved in the practical fight of how to make Virginia’s government function more effectively though technology.

He’s not just trying to get the government running smoothly, though. Chopra sees the development of the IT sector of our area’s economy as the third major goal in his work, and has grand ideas to test about how young people given a real chance and a computer might find their way into the new tech economy.

Virginians are lucky to have such a proactive visionary leading their tecnological development.

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 are completed.
Both the Senate and House have passed IG bills, with backers of the Senate bills — in a bid to win a floor vote — recently agreeing to a number of amendments aimed at addressing White House concerns. With the White House opposed to the House’s slightly stronger bill but apparently willing to swallow the Senate bill, aides expect the House to largely accept the Senate version.

• HR 5593, which would amend the Congressional Review act to mandate publication in the Congressional Record.

• An incomplete listing of public OLC memos is availble from the DOJ here.

• I’m currently reading this book on administrative law: Principles of Administrative Law. I recommend it enthusiastically, after reading the first chapter and its overview of administrative law and its history of the American administrative state.

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 reform process: Who will sponsor it? When will it pass? What are its chances?

As I wrote when we started encountering these hesitations,

As it stands now, though, we’re happy to not have all the answers about where the bill is going. Just like legislation itself, we’re not pretending to know the best strategy for the bill, and we recognize that best ideas will be the ones that can benefit from a large community of experts and stakeholders

Now that we’ve gotten some real feedback about the bill’s provisions, we can make some decisions about how to advocate for the package’s implementation. (more)

We’re delighted by the value of the comments. The comments repeatedly point out specific improvements or suggestions that we’ll be glad to integrate into a new version of the bill. Participants have suggested everything from wording changes to improvements for the interface and Web site. We’re also happy to see public proof that broad scrutiny can have a constructive influence on legislative work.

To integrate the community’s suggestions, we’ve decided to let comments open for about another two weeks, and to then craft a new version of the legislation, taking suggestions into account. We want to be sure that public involvement is credited for the improvements, continue to allow at least general commentary on the new version after it’s prepared.

Thanks again to everyone who has participated, and if you have more feedback to offer, you have until about May 19th to leave it!