Part-Time Policy Wonk

From Public.Resource.org:

The Government Accountability Office released 10 DVDs of materials, containing 619,481 PDF files. This material has been placed on-line for the public to examine. Even a cursory examination shows how incredibly valuable the Federal Legislative Histories are and what a loss to the U.S. Congress, the legal profession, and the general public it would be lock up this amazing resource created by those talented professionals, the Government Accountability Office legislative historians. As employees of the U.S. Congress, their work benefits us all and should be part of our common pool of public domain resources.

In response to the data release by the GAO, we have proposed an unsolicited joint venture [ pdf ] which would allow the GAO to ship to us the same materials they shipped to Thomson West.

Browse the GAO's data release.

Posted by Anne at 09:05 PM | Permalink

From the EPA:

As a backdrop to the National Dialogue, we conducted a review of existing reports to summarize what we have learned in the past about the needs of EPA's audiences. Past focus groups, usability studies and general information about audience needs and preferences for environmental information can help inform current information collection and validate findings. This report summarizes existing information needs for five of EPA’s major audience groups: government officials; news media; environmental and community groups; industry; and educators, students, researchers and librarians. Specifically, we report on their basic needs for information, information quality preferences, important information topics and uses of environmental information.

Review of Reports, Focus Groups and Other Resources on Information Access, from 1997 to 2008 (PDF) (15 pp, 242K)

From the EPA page, be sure to also see the Listening Sessions and June 9-13 Partner Blog summaries.

Posted by Anne at 08:54 PM | Permalink

From the Public Policy Institute of California:

This survey is the first in a new five-year PPIC Statewide Survey series focusing on information technology issues, funded with grants from the California Emerging Technology Fund and from ZeroDivide. The series’ intent is to inform state policymakers, encourage discussion, and raise public awareness about a variety of information technology issues. For this benchmark survey, we draw upon earlier PPIC Statewide Surveys for California trends over time and recent surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project for national comparisons.

Although the use of the Internet and information technology is expanding nationally, with California a global leader in this arena, we know from past studies that a number of large and important subgroups in the California population do not have access to information technology. Given the role of the Internet in modern society, and the reality of the digital divide, this survey seeks to inform and improve public policy choices involving this disjunction between large populations who are and are not “connected.” We examine both access and use of information technology as well as the public’s perceptions and attitudes.

Posted by Anne at 08:51 PM | Permalink

From the Inside Google Book Search blog:

For U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963, the rights holder needed to submit a form to the U.S. Copyright Office renewing the copyright 28 years after publication. In most cases, books that were never renewed are now in the public domain. Estimates of how many books were renewed vary, but everyone agrees that most books weren't renewed. If true, that means that the majority of U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963 are freely usable.

How do you find out whether a book was renewed? You have to check the U.S. Copyright Office records. Records from 1978 onward are online (see http://www.copyright.gov/records) but not downloadable in bulk. The Copyright Office hasn't digitized their earlier records, but Carnegie Mellon scanned them as part of their Universal Library Project, and the tireless folks at Project Gutenberg and the Distributed Proofreaders painstakingly corrected the OCR.

Thanks to the efforts of Google software engineer Jarkko Hietaniemi, we've gathered the records from both sources, massaged them a bit for easier parsing, and combined them into a single XML file available for download here.

Posted by Anne at 08:23 PM | Permalink

From Search Engine Watch:

Like a politician making campaign promises, Google has announced its involvement in the launch of the "Internet for Everyone" campaign. Unlike politicians, we actually know what the campaign is all about from the title and there's a higher chance of Google carrying out this platform than politicians keeping their promises.

The "Internet for Everyone" campaign is based on four principles: Access, Choice, Openness, and Innovation.

Posted by Anne at 08:21 PM | Permalink

From Slate:

I got bad news from the FBI a few months ago. A file I'd requested under the Freedom of Information Act wasn't going to be available. Ever.

And not for one of the reasons I already knew to expect—that the material was classified, that the file concerned a living person, or that no file existed to begin with. Judging by the FBI's final response letter, there might have been a file on my subject, a long-deceased Mississippi lawyer name John R. Poole. But if there was, it got shredded.

Posted by Anne at 08:19 PM | Permalink

From Federal Computer Week:

Having an effective presence on the Web is no longer as simple as putting up a home page and letting visitors do all the work to come to you. Many organizations now enhance their Web-based communications with various techniques to push news and fresh information out to interested recipients or seed links to the updates in places people frequent online.

Many government agencies have been dabbling with these Web 2.0 tools for some simple tasks, such as sending occasional press releases. Now, taking a cue from some pioneering private-sector firms and a thriving interactive Web community, some agencies are looking at the tools as a way to conduct more frequent, and at times more critical, information exchanges with other agencies and groups and individuals outside government.

Posted by Anne at 08:18 PM | Permalink

From The Florida Times-Union:

Simple solutions can sometimes ward off sticky problems.

Exhibit A, in this case, is State Attorney Harry Shorstein's good call to change his policy of giving uncopied files to outside agencies.

Twice in the last three years, public access to files involving investigations disappeared when either the FBI or the U.S. Attorney's Office asked for documents from the State Attorney's Office and copies weren't made before handing them over.

The latest case involved records the State Attorney's Office gathered in a probe of the city's minority contracting program that has been making headlines as part of an FBI probe into the Jacksonville port.

The problem is the public can't view, obtain or read about records the office doesn't have. And the FBI - which is not subject to Florida's public records law - has refused to provide Shorstein the records he gave that agency in 2004 until its investigation is over.

Posted by Anne at 08:16 PM | Permalink

From Federal Computer Week:

The Census Bureau might not get an additional $210 million as a result of a recent Senate vote.

The Senate voted 77-21 June 26 to remove the emergency spending designation from the funding, essentially dropping it from the fiscal 2008 Supplemental Appropriations Act.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez had requested additional money for this fiscal year at an April 3 hearing before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. He said the money would help offset the total cost of the 2010 census, which is estimated at $2.2 billion to $3 billion more than the original estimate, bringing the total to $14.5 billion. Some of that increase has been attributed to the Census Bureau's decision to make follow-up surveys paper-based rather using handheld computers.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who demanded the vote, argued that the $210 million could not be considered emergency spending. He blamed the rising costs on Census' mismanagement.

Posted by Anne at 08:14 PM | Permalink

From Information Week:

OpenCongress and MetaVid give citizens an open window into government activities

One unemployment bill before the U.S. Congress has generated more than 17,000 comments, thanks to one of many sites using technology to increase transparency, accountability, and participation in government.

OpenCongress aims to make everyone a political insider. It gives readers access to more detail and depth of information than traditional news stories. The free, open source, nonpartisan site does so by combining traditional news stories, summaries of bills, sponsors, status, roll calls on the latest issues put up for votes, and an area for user comments.

The site is a project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation. David Moore, executive director of PPF, spoke about the site at the Personal Democracy Forum conference in New York on Monday. . .

. . . Another site featured during the conference is MetaVid, an open source online domain that archives video from proceedings in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. Citizens who want to see what their representatives said on a specific issue can search for and play the specific footage they see.

Posted by Anne at 08:14 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

Secrecy News was removed from the distribution list for the U.S. State Department history publication “Foreign Relations of the United States” (FRUS) after we reported on errors in several FRUS volumes on March 24 and 26, 2008.

A spokesman for the State Department Historian’s Office confirmed that officials had ordered the removal of Secrecy News from the FRUS mailing list in response to our critical coverage.

Posted by Anne at 08:12 PM | Permalink

Posted on Library Juice:

I have read Mr. Sousa’s letter to Mr. Mark Greene, President of the Society of American Archivists (dated 06-06-08), Mr. Al-Jaberi’s statement (dated 27-04-08) and the article published by Stanford University’s official site regarding the illegally seized documents of the former Iraqi state and the archive of the Ba’ath Party (dated 18-06-08).

As the national archivist of Iraq, I would like to clarify several points regarding the issue of the illegally seized documents of the former Iraqi state and the archive of the Ba’ath Party.

Posted by Anne at 08:09 PM | Permalink

From Reuters:

Google Inc has told a senior Republican lawmaker concerned about privacy that the Internet search and advertising company supports a federal privacy law.

Privacy advocates object to the amount of information that Google, Yahoo and other online companies collect about users. Google, in particular, has been under pressure to post a link on its home page to its privacy policy.

Posted by Anne at 06:49 PM | Permalink

From the Toronto Star:

Last week's introduction of new copyright legislation ignited a firestorm with thousands of Canadians expressing genuine shock at provisions that opposition MPs argued would create a "police state." As opposition to the copyright bill mounts, the most common question is "why"? . . .

. . . While Prentice has responded by citing the need to update Canada's copyright law in order to comply with the World Intellectual Property Organization's Internet treaties, the reality may be that those treaties have little to do with Bill C-61.

Instead, the bill dubbed by critics as the Canadian Digital Millennium Copyright Act (after the U.S. version of the law) is the result of an intense public and private campaign waged by the U.S. government to pressure Canada into following its much-criticized digital copyright model.

Posted by Anne at 06:48 PM | Permalink

From the Globe and Mail:

Canadians caught downloading illegal copies of music and movies online could be slapped with a penalty of $500 under new federal legislation to overhaul the Copyright Act of Canada, which was last updated in 1997, four years before the introduction of the iPod.

The long-anticipated amendments, which Industry Minister Jim Prentice said are needed to bring Canada up to date with the rest of the digital world, triggered a flurry of heated reactions among consumers, artists and the entertainment industry yesterday. They also raised the question of who will have to play the role of copyright cop on the Internet.

Posted by Anne at 06:47 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

The White House does not have to make public internal documents examining the potential disappearance of e-mails sent during some of the Bush administration's biggest controversies, a U.S. district judge ruled yesterday.

In a 39-page opinion, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said that the White House's Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), even though its top officials had complied with the public records law for more than two decades.

Posted by Anne at 06:46 PM | Permalink

From the Mercury News:

The House today easily approved a compromise bill setting new electronic surveillance rules that effectively shield telecommunications companies from lawsuits arising from the government's terrorism-era warrantless eavesdropping on phone and computer lines in this country.

The bill, which was passed on a 293-129 vote, does more than just protect the telecoms. The update to the 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is an attempt to balance privacy rights with the government's responsibility to protect the country against attack, taking into account changes in telecommunications technologies.

Posted by Anne at 06:37 PM | Permalink

From the BBC:

Sweden's parliament has approved controversial new laws allowing authorities to spy on cross-border e-mail and telephone traffic.

The country's intelligence bureau will be able to scan international calls, faxes and e-mails.

The measure was passed by a narrow majority after a heated debate in the Stockholm parliament.

Critics say it threatens civil liberties and represents Europe's most far-reaching eavesdropping plan.

Posted by Anne at 06:34 PM | Permalink

From Tim Stanley's Justia blog:

Oregon's Legislative Counsel Committee had a meeting this morning to discuss the copyright claim on the Oregon Revised Statutes. After taking legal counsel from Dexter Johnson, talking with Karl Olson, Carl Malamud, three Oregon citizens and myself, they unanimously voted to not to enforce any copyright claims on the Oregon Revised Statutes.

Link to the prepared statements submitted by Public Resource.

Posted by Anne at 06:33 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

The cost of implementing the national security classification system in government and industry reached an all-time high of $9.91 billion last year, according to the latest annual report (pdf) from the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO).

The 2007 classification cost figure, which includes physical security, computer security and other aspects of classified information security, was a 4.6 percent increase over the year before and is the highest amount ever reported by the ISOO.

Posted by Anne at 06:31 PM | Permalink

USGS Press Release:

The story of the Nation's land during the last 75 years can be told impartially through records of earth observation — aerial photographs dating from the 1930s and satellite images dating from the 1960s. This vast reservoir of data supplies objective reference points that are essential in documenting land change and in understanding climate change. Preserving important records of the Nation's history while providing convenient public access to them is a vital responsibility of government.

To meet this responsibility in the field of earth observation, Professor Allen Weinstein, Archivist of the United States, and Dr. Mark Myers, Director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), today signed an agreement creating a cooperative framework for how the two Federal agencies will together ensure the preservation and access of the massive earth imagery and geospatial data resources currently archived by the USGS at its Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Posted by Anne at 09:08 PM | Permalink

From Free Government Information:

For those of you following the question regarding the copyright of Oregon's Revised Statutes, you might want to visit: public.resource.org/oregon.

The State of Oregon has scheduled a hearing for June 19, 2008 to “consider its copyright policy in light of technological developments and the Internet.”

And, the Public.Resource site now has links to the testimony submitted by Carl Malamud, Tim Stanley and Karl Olson.

Posted by Anne at 09:05 PM | Permalink

From Stanford:

After five years of storage in a Baghdad home and a U.S. government facility, millions of records from Saddam Hussein's regime may soon be available for review at the Hoover Institution.

The Iraq Memory Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based group that collected about 7 million documents from Hussein's Baath Party headquarters just after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, is entrusting the records to Hoover, which has agreed to hold the documents for five years and then help arrange their return to Iraq.

Parts of the collection—which promise insight into how Hussein ran his dictatorship—may be open by the end of the summer, said Richard Sousa, Hoover's senior associate director.

Posted by Anne at 09:03 PM | Permalink

From the the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Congress is widely reported to have struck a deal on legislation to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that includes immunity for telecommunications companies that helped the government illegally spy on millions of ordinary Americans. Today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) held a press conference with the ACLU to emphasize that this much-touted "compromise" is a sham aimed at letting both the government and the telecoms off the hook for violating the law and the Constitution.

Posted by Anne at 09:01 PM | Permalink

From Federal Computer Week:

In response to the revelations about White House e-mail practices, members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee have introduced the Electronic Communications Preservation Act. The bill would direct the Archivist of the United States to issue regulations that require federal agencies to preserve electronic records — especially e-mail messages — in an electronic format.

Current National Archives and Records Administration regulations permit agencies to preserve electronic records by storing them in an electronic format or printing them on paper and saving the paper. Agencies almost universally choose the paper option if they preserve their electronic records at all.

Posted by Anne at 08:34 PM | Permalink

From the SLA Public Policy blog:

On 6 June 2008, SLA sent a letter to David Williams, Director of Information Solutions and Services Center at Sandia National Laboratories, requesting information and/or documents detailing Sandia’s library development strategy, plans to continue or discontinue access, or an implementation timeline.

Read the letter.

Posted by Anne at 08:00 PM | Permalink

From the SLA Public Policy blog:

Today, 16 June 2008, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) distributed a news release, EPA Library on Effects of New Chemicals will Remain Closed. SLA was immediately in contact with EPA staff for a response, which follows below.

Posted by Anne at 07:56 PM | Permalink

From the SLA Public Policy blog:

SLA is in ongoing communication with the EPA, and has been inquiring about the recent reports regarding the space being allocated to the reopening of EPA libraries that were closed in 2007. On 9 June 2008 EPA staff provided SLA with an update on EPA library activities regarding some recent press articles.

Posted by Anne at 07:54 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

To reduce unnecessary restrictions on unclassified information, Congress should require agencies to publish more of their unclassified records, we suggested in a letter (pdf) to the House Intelligence Committee this week.

A White House policy announced last month to establish a government-wide standard for “controlled unclassified information” (CUI) may exacerbate existing barriers to public access, even sweeping up embargoed press releases into a formal control category.

Instead of facilitating broad information sharing, as intended, CUI could end up as the equivalent of a fourth level of classification that tends to prohibit public access to information that has not been specifically approved for release.

One way to avoid that outcome is to increase the routine disclosure of unclassified records of public interest.

Posted by Anne at 07:45 PM | Permalink

On June 11th, the House Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment held hearings on the Improving Public Access to Documents Act of 2008 (H.R. 6193).

Watch a video feed and read the testimony.

Posted by Anne at 07:25 PM | Permalink

From Wired:

Does the FBI track cellphone users' physical movements without a warrant? Does the Bureau store recordings of innocent Americans caught up in wiretaps in a searchable database? Does the FBI's wiretap equipment store information like voicemail passwords and bank account numbers without legal authorization to do so?

That's what the nation's Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court wanted to know, in a series of secret inquiries in 2005 and 2006 into the bureau's counterterrorism electronic surveillance efforts, revealed for the first time in newly declassified documents.

Posted by Anne at 06:59 PM | Permalink

From Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington:

Today, D.C. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued an opinion in CREW v. Office of Administration, finding that the Office of Administration (OA) is not an agency subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

In May 2007, CREW sued OA for records regarding missing White House e-mail and the office’s assessment of the scope of the problem. After initially agreeing to provide records, OA changed course and claimed it was not an agency and, therefore, had no obligation to comply with the FOIA. OA made this claim despite the fact that even the White House’s own website described OA as an agency and included regulations for processing FOIA requests.

While acknowledging the question is a close one, Judge Kollar-Kotelly has found that OA is not an agency on the grounds that it does not exercise substantial independent authority.

Read the Opinion.

Posted by Anne at 06:55 PM | Permalink

From CanWest Digital Media:

The federal government's new copyright legislation is expected to take a hard line on the use of circumvention devices that could mean consumers are effectively locked out of digital content they have already purchased.

Lobbyists familiar with the bill, expected to be tabled this week, say those who want the prohibition of circumvention devices to get around digital security to be limited to people who crack locks on copyrighted material to make multiple copies and sell them for commercial profit will be disappointed.

And this broad approach could brand as lawbreakers consumers who use circumvention devices to copy legally purchased material, including music and movies, for personal use.

Posted by Anne at 04:50 PM | Permalink

From the European Commission:

An agreement on copyright was signed today by libraries, archives and right holders, in the presence of Commissioner Viviane Reding. The Memorandum of Understanding on orphan works will help cultural institutions to digitise books, films and music whose authors are unknown, making them available to the public online.

Posted by Anne at 04:47 PM | Permalink

From the EPA Partner Blog for the National Dialogue:

EPA is holding an on-line discussion among state, tribe, and other federal partners of EPA, as well as the public to foster collaboration on information access. For this discussion, we are using a blog which is a more interactive and personal form of technology. Everyone is invited to use this site to identify and share their best resources, tools, and ideas for improving access to EPA’s environmental information. This is a key part of the National Dialogue on Access to Environmental Information – working with you to enhance information access.

This blog will be open for comment for one week (June 9-13, 2008). The blog will then be closed and a summary report will be posted on the “What We’ve Learned” section of the National Dialogue website by June 20th.

Posted by Anne at 08:47 PM | Permalink

European Ombudsman Press Release:

The European Ombudsman, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, has called on the European Parliament (EP) to defend the European Union’s commitment to transparency and the citizens’ right of access to EU documents. This follows the European Commission’s recent proposals to revise the law on public access to documents. In his contribution to today's public hearing in the EP's LIBE Committee (Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs), the Ombudsman said:

"The Commission's proposals would mean access to fewer, not more, documents. This raises fundamental issues of principle about the EU's commitment to openness and transparency."

Posted by Anne at 04:47 PM | Permalink

From the SLA Public Policy Connections blog:

SLA provided comments to Elias Zerhouni, M.D. at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) expressing general support of the NIH Public Access Policy. SLA recommended shortening the embargo period and producing a list of publishers whose author publishing agreements provide for deposit with PubMed Central in a manner that is consistent with copyright law. The letter also strongly opposed the possibility of NIH acting as a dark archive and providing links to publishers’ Web sites.

Read letter.

Posted by Anne at 04:46 PM | Permalink

From Federal News Radio:

The next eight years will be critical ones for the National Archives. As they prepare for a Presidential transition that will add to the more than 10 billion pages of documents they already hold, they'll also deal with funding issues and technology advances that will change the way they do business. The Archives says their mission is "to ensure the public can discover, use, and learn from the records of their Government," and they are circulating a document of their own to plan to keep doing just that.

The document is called "Strategy for Digitizing Archival Materials for Public Access, 2007-2016."

Posted by Anne at 04:44 PM | Permalink

From the Times Higher Education:

The zombies wander the land; the lone survivor tries desperately to find support and resources. This might describe any number of films, but it also acts as a metaphor for the contemporary editor or biographer dealing with the undead of literary estates. The creative artist is long deceased, and what lives on is the administration of the literary estate, mechanistic in its movements and predatory in its actions. The literary estate uses the letter of copyright to disadvantage the scholarly work of editors and biographers in ways that the spirit of copyright does not justify.

Posted by Anne at 04:43 PM | Permalink

John Wilkin's blog at the University of Michigan:

At Michigan we're engaged in an activity that I hope will one day seem ordinary and a routine part of library work. Resources from several departments are devoted to determining the copyright status of works typically presumed to be in copyright. For now, we're focusing on US monographic imprints (books, that is) published between 1923 and 1963, but plan to turn our attention to non-US publications in the future.

Posted by Anne at 04:40 PM | Permalink

Press Release:

U.S. Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) today [June 3rd] introduced the Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008 (S.3077), which would expand the information available on USASpending.gov, as well as make the data more accessible and readable. USASpending.gov (aka "Google for Government"), created by the Coburn-Obama Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 and launched in December 2007, makes public information about nearly all Federal grants, contracts, loans and other financial assistance available in a regularly updated, user-friendly, and searchable format.

This new legislation would allow USASpending.gov visitors to view copies of Federal contracts, as well as information about competitive bidding, earmarks, government lease agreements, work quality, Federal audit disputes, any violations or criminal activities, Federal tax compliance, and government reports. It would also improve website searchability, provide a method to report errors, ensure data accuracy, and require a quality audit of the website every six months.

Senators Tom Carper (D-DE) and John McCain (R-AZ) are original cosponsors of this legislation.

Posted by Anne at 08:50 PM | Permalink

From the Executive Office of the President:

The Federal Government continues to improve services and deliver results through the adoption and implementation of the E-Government (E-Gov) initiatives and common government wide solutions. The departments and agencies continue to make great improvements in the area of security and privacy with their implementation efforts underway for the requirements included in Homeland Security Presidential Directive-12 (HSPD-12), the Trusted Internet Connection (TIC) and the specific efforts for securing personally identifiable information. The United States Government continues to be one of the largest users and acquirers of data, information and supporting technology systems in the world, by investing approximately $70 billion annually on Information Technology (IT). The Federal Government has made improvements but continues to strive to be the world’s leader in managing technology and information to achieve the greatest gains of productivity, service and results. Implementation of the E-Gov initiatives and the common government wide solutions has delivered significant results to the taxpayer and federal employees alike with $508 million of actual cost saving being reported this past fiscal year.

Posted by Anne at 08:47 PM | Permalink

From Free Government Information:

In April, the New York Times broke a story about the now infamous Pentagon information apparatus that used retired military officers in a "campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance" (Behind Military Analysts, the Pentagon's Hidden Hand By David Barstow, New York Times, April 20, 2008). The Times also published some of the documents it obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests on its web site (NY Times publishes some FOIA documents).

Now, the Pentagon has published documents it released. This collection appears more complete than what the NYT released.

Military Analysts "These documents were released to the New York Times regarding the Pentagon's Military Analyst program." (last updated 28-May-08)

Posted by Anne at 08:45 PM | Permalink

From Nextgov.com:

Chafing at Bush administration secrecy, congressional Democrats are handing the National Archives and Records Administration new jobs promoting government transparency. Officials at the records agency appear to be balking at taking on unfunded mandates beyond their traditional role. If Congress wants the Archives to become open-government cops, archivists may prefer to remain librarians.

"They have always had a narrow view of their mandate and have never been particularly inclined to seek any expansion," said Patrice McDermott of OpentheGovernment.org, a coalition of groups urging government transparency. "They see their mission as providing access to historical records. They see [overseeing] contemporaneous records as a shift."

Posted by Anne at 08:42 PM | Permalink

From the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:

Bell Canada Inc. is facing another challenge to its internet throttling practices as Quebec's consumer watchdog, L'Union des consommateurs, has filed a class-action lawsuit against the company.

The suit, filed Thursday in Quebec Superior Court on behalf of Montreal resident Myrna Raphael, seeks certification for all subscribers in the province. The lawsuit alleges that by deliberately slowing internet speeds, Bell has misrepresented its service and raised concerns over privacy.

Posted by Anne at 08:40 PM | Permalink

From The Australian:

The State Library of New South Wales has received $10 million to digitise its catalogue of some of its oldest and most valuable works.

The budget funding, allocated over the next three years, would give libraries across the state online access to digital versions of some 18th century manuscripts.

Posted by Anne at 08:38 PM | Permalink

From Discovery News: