SLA Government Information Division

ICANN OKs Internationalized Domain Names

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will begin allowing Internet domain names that use non-Latin characters. The change in policy was announced by ICANN on 30 October 2009 in their release ICANN Bringing the Language of the World to the Global Internet. ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush calls the move "the biggest technical change to the Internet since it was created four decades ago." We won't be seeing these domain names tomorrow, however. The first step in the process is to allow countries to apply, beginning 16 November, for non-Latin Internet extensions reflecting their country name and in characters from their national language. A New York Times article, Internet Addresses Can Use New Scripts, says "people will start seeing them in use around mid-2010, particularly in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts in which demand for the new 'internationalized' domain name system has been among the strongest, Icann officials say."

DHS expands interactive IdeaFactory

In 2007 the Transportation Security Administration introduced a web 2.0 tool, the IdeaFactory, to encourage employees to submit and collaborate on innovative ideas.  As of August, TSA had received 9000 ideas and over 78,000 comments,  A year ago, with roughly 4500 ideas received, 20 ideas had been implemented nationally.

The Department of Homeland Security has now decided to expand the IdeaFactory across the agency, but will add an IdeaFactory council to help manage the ideas and decide how to implement them.  This will be in addition to the existing interactive tools whereby employees can vote on the ideas.

What does yourorganization do to promote collaboration and innnovation?

Read more about IdeaFactory  on NextGov, Federal News Radio and ondotgov.

DOE Docs Digitized via IAEA Partnership

A recent press release from the Energy Department's Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) explains how OSTI's partnership with the IAEA and its INIS database advances the digitization of legacy documents on the peaceful applications of nuclear technology. From the 27 October 2009 release:

As part of its knowledge preservation mandate, the IAEA, through the International Nuclear Information System (INIS), is digitizing historic nuclear energy research documents dating from 1970 through the early 1990s. These documents have been provided by member states over the years, including more than 180,000 documents from the DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI). OSTI, within the Office of Science, is the U.S. representative to INIS and has had its own digitization focus in recent years. ...

Prior to the electronic era, where most documents are "born digital," OSTI provided research results in microfiche form to INIS and various depository libraries throughout the U.S. While OSTI and the DOE community have digitized a portion of these older reports in recent years, INIS has made major inroads in digitizing a significant volume. Reflecting the spirit of partnership, INIS provides electronic copies to the originating country for its own use in addition to providing access through its database at the IAEA in Vienna. Thus, the U.S. documents are being provided to OSTI for accessibility through the OSTI databases and Science.gov.

INIS announced free, unrestricted Web access to the INIS database on 3 April 2009.

Progress Check on Fed Web Council Recommendations

Experienced U.S. government website manager Candi Harrison reports on the status of recommendations made one year ago in the Federal Web Managers Council white paper Putting Citizens First – Transforming Online Government [PDF]. She awards or deducts points for the feds in her Candi on Content blog post, Web Managers Council's White Paper - Is There Progress A Year Later?

The ratings are lukewarm (plus one; minus one; too early to tell), but her post makes a good call to action:

This White Paper was darned good. The Federal Web Managers Council worked hard to think this through and get it right. These are changes that, if adopted across government, truly can improve citizens’ experience with their government. Lots of people agreed on that, months ago. Let's not let this drop.

NLM Medical Procedure Costs FAQ

From a recent post to the GovLoop Libraries group, from NLM's Cynthia Burke:

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) responds to more than 100,000 questions each year. Regularly asked questions become Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). NLM Reference and Consumer Health FAQs are at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/faqref.html. We review and update our FAQs frequently. The FAQ resources include national and international government agencies and non-profit organizations. Three of our FAQs are about health care costs. One is about the costs of medical procedures.

The FAQ: Medical Procedure Costs - By State, is at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/procedcosts.html. The FAQ lists 15 states. For states not listed, there are resources that you can use to find cost information.

[Thanks, Cynthia!]

Information Week on go.usa.gov

The Information Week Blog has a nice summary of why the U.S. government's new URL shortener, go.usa.gov, makes sense. See The Custom URL Shortener, 16 October 2009.

New Office of Government Information Services Now Online

The new Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has begun operations. 

The role of OGIS, as described on their new website, is to:

• provide services to mediate disputes between FOIA requesters and Federal agencies
• review policies and procedures of administrative agencies under FOIA
• review agency compliance with FOIA
• recommend policy changes to the Congress and President to improve the administration of FOIA

OGIS was established by the OPEN Government Act of 2007, Public Law 110-175. The law amends sections of the Freedom of Information Act; OGIS has posted a list of the provisions related to the office.

The new director of OGIS is Miriam Nisbet, who has previously served in the Washington office of the American Libraries Association and as Special Counsel for Information Policy at NARA.

Social Media Policy Portal

Social Media Governance <http://socialmediagovernance.com/>, a website managed by the entrepreneurial Chris Boudreax, features a database of over 100 sample social media policies. The policies are from businesses, government agencies, nonprofits, the health care industry, and other sectors. Government policies on the list include those from the New Zealand State Services Commission, the UK Civil Service, the Smithsonian Institution, the city of Seattle, and state of Delaware.

Federal Depository Library Program's Future: Interim Report

The future of the U.S. Government Printing Office Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) is under study due to trends such as the increasing digitization of government documents and pressure on many academic libraries (one type of host library) to relinquish physical space. The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA) have engaged the nonprofit research group Ithaka S+R to make a strategic assessment of the program in a changing information environment. Ithaka released preliminary results on 19 October 2009 in their summary interim report Documents for a Digital Democracy: A Model for the Federal Depository Library Program in the 21st Century [PDF]. A core theme of the report is that librarians will continue a shift from processing collections to a more active role in supporting government information users. For example, the report states:

...librarians should take on an expanded role as government information librarians rather than government documents librarians, focusing on supporting users working with government information and data no matter its source or format.

...librarians should be partners in the creation of value-added discovery tools for government information, created by libraries, library organizations, or non-profit or private sector entities. In addition, librarians should support users seeking to make innovative use of digital government data, such as by helping them with combining information from multiple sources or developing computationally intensive research methodologies.

Library Journal discusses the report in its article, ARL Members Weigh Changes to Federal Depository Library Program, 19 October 2009.

Scholarships for MLS with E-gov and Digital Gov Focus

The Center for Library and Information Innovation at the iSchool at the University of Maryland College Park, in partnership with the Government Information Online Initiative and the University of Illinois at Chicago, is accepting applications for 20 Master of Library Science (MLS) scholarships. The scholarships are for a new online MLS program focused on e-government services and digital government information.

Applications are due by 1 February 2010, and the program is scheduled to begin in Fall 2010. For more information, see www.liicenter.org/libegov.