SLA Government Information Division

CRS on 'Inherently Governmental Functions'

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) has issued a report on Inherently Governmental Functions and Department of Defense Operations (report number R40641), 22 June 2009. From the report summary:

An inherently governmental function is one that, as a matter of law and policy, must be performed by federal government employees and cannot be contracted out because it is intimately related to the public interest...

Congress has several options if it is concerned that deficiencies in the existing definitions of inherently governmental functions may lead agencies to improperly contract out inherently governmental functions. Options include (1) relying upon recent statutory changes and/or the policies of the Obama Administration, which proposes to limit contracting out generally, to effect desired changes in agency contracting; (2) changing the existing definition of inherently governmental functions; (3) placing limits on contracting out or use of appropriated funds; (4) addressing structural factors potentially prompting agencies to rely on contractors; (5) providing for more effective oversight of executive branch contracting decisions; and (6) focusing more on questions of contracting policy (i.e., what functions should the government perform?) than on contracting law (i.e., what functions must the government perform?).

The full report is available from OpenCRS.com; CRS does not provide direct public access to its reports.

White House Call for Comments: Declassification Policy

The Obama Administration is seeking public comment on declassification policy. The forum for comments opens today, 29 June 2009.  The forum is being hosted by the OSTP Blog and will close 10 July. Comments on the first topic within the forum are due by 1 July.  The OSTP Blog posts:

• Introduction to the Declassification Policy Forum by Martin Faga, Acting Chair of the Public Interest Declassification Board
• Declassification Policy, the first discussion topic, with comments due 1 July 2009

Relevant documents:

• Current declassification policy in Section 3 of Executive Order 12958, as amended.
• Presidential Memorandum on Classified Information and Controlled Unclassified Information, 27 May 2009, ordering a review of EO 12958 as amended.

E-Government Needs Public Libraries

U.S. Public Libraries and E-Government Services [PDF] is a new issue brief from the American Libraries Association (ALA). From the press release announcement:

 “Public libraries often are the only organizations within a community that can help individuals interact with government agencies and access e-government services,” said ALA Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels. “As more and more government information and services are becoming only available online, there is an urgent need for governments to collaborate with public libraries to provide e-government services that best meet community needs.”

CA Legislature Settles with MAPLight

The California First Amendment Coalition and MAPLight, a California nonprofit that creates mash-ups to draw links between money and politics, filed a freedom of information lawsuit against the Office of Legislative Counsel of California for access to its bills and votes database after requests for access were denied. On 16 June 2009, a settlement was announced. The legislature now makes the database available for free download from its website.

For details of the settlement, see the CFAC-MAPLight press release.

The Sacramento Bee reports on the settlement in its 18 June 2009 article State settles suit seeking online access to all bills.

Previous DGI blog post: Groups Sue for California Legislative Data, 5 December 2008

State Revenue Reports: No Immediate Relief

The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) and the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) in partnership with the National Governors Association (NGA) have recently released reports on the fiscal conditions of U.S. state governments. Stateline.org has a summary of the reports in its article Reports: Bleak state budgets through 2011.

NCSL report: State Tax Performance through April 2009 [PDF]

NASBO/NGA report: The Fiscal Survey of States [PDF]

TED@State on June 3

The State Department is hosting the first Technology, Entertainment, Design, or TED*, event to be sponsored by the U.S. Government. TED events are invitation-only, but a video of the event will be available on the TED website along with videos of past TED Talks.

From the State Department press release:

On June 3, 2009, the Global Partnership Initiative will host TED@State, the first U.S. Government-sponsored Technology, Entertainment, Design, or TED, event in Dean Acheson Auditorium from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. The TED@State speakers will be as follows: social-media analyst Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody; philanthropist Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO of the Acumen Fund; futurist Stewart Brand, author of the Whole Earth Catalog; economist Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion; and data visionary Hans Rosling, Karolinska Institutet Professor of International Health. Ambassador Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, the Department of State's Special Representative for Global Partnerships, will introduce the speakers, and Chris Anderson, Curator of TED, will moderate a question and answer session.

*See:
About TED and Is TED Elitist?

[hat tip to FGI]

Coalition Builds State & Local Recovery Act Info Center

The States for a Transparent and Accountable Recovery (STAR Coalition) has launched a website featuring an extensive Recovery Act Info Center. The Info Center has state accountability overviews for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The overviews include a link to and review of the state's Recovery Act website, a description of the state's Recovery Act oversight apparatus, information on local policy debates, and links to local watchdog groups' sites and to any other local web resources. The Info Center also links to about 30 Recovery Act websites maintained by large cities across the country.

At the national level, the Recovery Act Info Center has a summary of federal oversight, summaries of the major funding flows, and a page with web links and a bibliography.

The STAR Coalition website was created by Good Jobs First, a coalition member. The site describes the coalition as "a network of groups working at the state and local levels to ensure that the implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is transparent, accountable, fair and effective."

Swine Flu, Gov Info, Info Literacy, and Twitter

As government information professionals know, two authoritative sources of information on swine flu are the UN World Health Organization (WHO), an international governmental organization, and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), a U.S. government organization. RSS feeds are available from WHO and CDC, here and here. CDC is on Twitter at http://twitter.com/cdcemergency. A widget from the CDC (get it here) has made it easy for any US government or other website to direct citizens to helpful, authoritative information. NextGov has an overview of federal information coordination here: Feds coordinate Web communications to fight swine flu (27 April 2009).

All the same, misinformation abounds and some people are blaming Twitter. As information professionals know, misinformation was not invented with the Internet. But each new hype cycle provides another opportunity for teaching information literacy.

Here are a few popular postings in the latest back-and-forth about Twitter, swine flu, and information quality (as usual, plenty of viewpoints in the comments, too):

• Swine flu: Twitter's power to misinform, 25 April 2009, by Evgeny Morozov on Foreign Policy's net. effect blog, where the conversation seems to have started.
• Responding to Morozov, 26 April 2009, by Timothy M. O'Brien on O'Reilly Radar blog.
• Swine flu spreads via Twitter, 27 April 2009, by Brennon Slattery on PC World's blog.
• News Industry on Twitter: Full of Crazies, Not Reliable, 28 April 2009, by Timothy M. O'Brien on O'Reilly Radar blog. Probably not the last word.

Related DGI post: The Trouble with Twitter

Recovery.gov and Accountability

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued testimony and a report on tracking Recovery Act funds to the state and local levels:

TESTIMONY

Recovery Act: As Initial Implementation Unfolds in States and Localities, Continued Attention to Accountability Issues Is Essential GAO-09-631T,  April 23, 2009

Summary (HTML)   Full Report (PDF, 42 pages)

REPORT
Recovery Act: As Initial Implementation Unfolds in States and Localities, Continued Attention to Accountability Issues Is Essential, GAO-09-580,  April 23, 2009
Summary (HTML)   Highlights Page (PDF)   Full Report (PDF, 303 pages)

The full report presents summaries of 16 states' tracking efforts and capacity. GAO makes recommendations on accountability and transparency requirements, the single audit process, reporting on impact, state and federal data collection, administrative support and oversight, and communications.

On another front, today the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board kicked off its week-long "national dialogue" on improving Recovery Act funds transparency through Recovery.gov. The front page of Recovery.gov links to a separate site for handling the dialogue, http://www.thenationaldialogue.org/. The conversation there has already begun.

SLA Joins in Letter on Presidential Libraries Proposal; Deadline Extended

A group of organizations including SLA responded to the recent National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) request for input into the development of alternative models for Presidential Libraries. The organizations' letter [PDF] in response to the NARA request [PDF] asked for an extension of the deadline, which has been granted. The new deadline for input is 21 May 2009.

Two points raised in this initial letter from the organizations are:

• "We are especially concerned by the proposal briefly discussed in the request for information to process records systematically rather than under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)."
• "The proposals discussed in your request for information seem to not fully take into account recommendations made by the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB) regarding expediting the declassification of presidential records."

For more information, read the 22 April post on the SLA Public Policy Connections blog.

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