by Jan Keiser

I was recently inspired by an article I read in Fast Company (2/12 issue). The cover story is called The Secrets of Generation FLUX, Generation FLUX being defined as “less a demographic designation than a psychographic one. “What defines GenFLUX is a mind-set that embraces instability that tolerates and even enjoys recalibrating careers, business models and assumptions.” I don’t know about you, but this defines me, I’m a boomer, and finally – I am on trend!

While new graduates are discouraged because jobs have been tough to find, many are still optimistic. I think it’s because they have so many tools – electronic, yes – but they also have spirit. Generations behind the Boomers can walk into a library and begin setting up all sorts of electronic bells and whistles that delight their users. They are thinking about the ways to deliver information and reading material to their users. These people are prepared to be flexible. They are prepared to intern or work part-time if that’s what’s available. These are people who plan on 4-year careers and think the way I did (ahead of my time…) Unfortunately, my career was considered unstable because I didn’t stay in one place longer than 3 years. These days, that mindset is necessary to survive. (Another article in this issue is titled, The Four-Year Career.)

For a couple of years now SLA has been trying to help us evolve our thinking. SLA created an entire campaign, FutureReady365, to help us be techno – savvy, electronically-enabled librarians, researchers; informationists (pick your label.) I know some people grumbled about why this campaign was necessary and I was aghast – “WHY IS IT NECESSARY???” In a short article appearing on Infotoday.com (2/2/12), the authors (who also lead the project) discuss 365futureready and describe its success. “Over the course of the year, it became evident that many library and information professionals are already engaged in some very interesting, completely future-ready activities. The call to blog about those successes was like shining a spotlight on all of our best practices in turn. As you can see from the cloud tag (right), three main issues were repeatedly mentioned: value, collaboration, and technology.” (The article also mentions a Fast Company article – I don’t know if it’s the same one I am referring to.)

When I was laid off the first time, I was devastated. The thought nagging me was, “I really like what I do.” So I established a home-based research business – one of the early home businesses among my circle. I remember not being at all afraid to set up a business – I was excited. I didn’t know that I was being “entrepreneurial,” my friends told me I was nuts. I found a book that seemed written just for me – I believe is was by Sue Rugge. I read Mary Ellen Bates and thought, wow (I still do) – she told me “you can do this.” The Association for Independent Information Professionals had formed and they were offering a lot of information. In retrospect, there was actually a lot of support for me and others to think entrepreneurial. Alas, I hated the cold calling. I would probably still be in business for myself if I’d had someone else to manage selling while I handled marketing, operations and research.

I’ve been wondering lately if I’ve lost that spirit, so reading this article was very timely for me. I believe much depends on a person’s spirit – just how entrepreneurial are you?

Fast Company and WIRED are as fringe as I can get in my Corporate Resource Center but I encourage my clients to follow pop culture, know the current headlines, listen to younger generations, and know how to actually use the technology, if they want to remain relevant. It’s helpful for me to think about what I’d do if I had to scramble and find work (I have been laid off three times – I’m always afraid). What do I know? Is it enough? How much more should I know? What do I have to offer?

I intend to foster this entrepreneurial state of mind. This isn’t to prepare for job hunting, but to be entrepreneurial in my present position.
If anyone else catches the entrepreneurial bug or is just interested in how to go about establishing a business – Mary Ellen Bates has a couple of good books that address all the issues. I also went to the AIIP website and she has a current column which discusses a survey she conducted to learn more about who the independent professionals were. Most of them were Boomers.

I’m just saying – be prepared for anything – and always carry a UBS stick in case you need to leave unexpectedly.

Freedom of Information

National Security Archive Files a FOIA Request to Find Out Why the CIA is Attempting to Price Out Declassification Reviews
“On September 23, 2011 the CIA launched a covert attack on Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) by entering new regulation changes into the Federal Register, which gouge requesters with outrageous fees for submitting MDR requests. While the CIA no doubt wanted to avoid the publicity the Department of Justice received after their ill-conceived FOIA regulations, the draconian regs are garnering attention. . . So who came up with this anti-openness regulation? And how did they explain it as a good idea – especially during Obama’s “new era of open government?” To follow the paper trail and disclose the CIA’s internal justifications for these astronomical price increases, today the National Security Archive filed a FOIA request with the CIA for all “emails, memos, position papers, or power point presentations” about the CIA’s decision to change its MDR regulations.”
http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/archive-files-a-foia-request-to-find-out-why-the-cia-is-attempting-to-price-out-declassification-reviews/

Groups Protest CIA’s Covert Attack on Public Access
“More than 30 organizations [including SLA] joined the National Security Archive and OpenTheGovernment.org in protesting the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) recent decision to charge the public outrageous fees for the opportunity to challenge secrecy claims. The fees, which can run requesters up to $72 per hour even if no information is found or released, effectively cut off access to a system that researchers, historians, public interest advocates and others have used successfully to challenge the CIA’s extreme secrecy — the Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) process.”
http://www.openthegovernment.org/node/3372

National Security Counselors Sues the CIA for Ignoring Freedom of Information Laws
“At the same time that 36 organizations are attempting to use political and bureaucratic pressure to force the rollback of damaging MDR regulations at the CIA, Kel McClanahan of the National Security Counselors has filed a lawsuit against the Agency in the United States District Court of the District of Columbia. It is important to note that the National Security Counselors case is broader than just the MDR fee issue. It attacks the CIA’s willful and intentional violation of federal law in regard to MDR and the Freedom of Information Act.  Below is a brief summary of the complaint’s key points.”
http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2012/02/23/national-security-counselors-sue-the-cia-for-ignoring-freedom-of-information-laws/

Democratic senators want super PAC crackdown
“Senate Democrats are calling on the Federal Election Commission to crack down on super PACs, arguing that voters deserve more information about who is funding independent political advertisements. Eleven Democrats on Tuesday sent a letter to FEC Chairwoman Caroline Hunter, urging the commission to enact broad disclosure and disclaimer rules in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision that struck down limits on corporate and union contributions to the outside groups.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/73136.html

DoD Reports “Impressive Strides” in Updating Classification
“The Department of Defense said it has cancelled more than 300 of its 1800 classification guides as a result of the ongoing Fundamental Classification Guidance Review.  The defunct guides can no longer be used to authorize the classification of national security information. “The Department has continued to make impressive strides in updating our Security Classification Guides (SCGs) and remains focused on ensuring that guidance reflects current operational and technical circumstances relevant to the protection of properly classified information,” DoD told the Information Security Oversight Office in a February 16, 2012 interim report.”
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2012/02/dod_strides.html

Public Policy

Are Librarians Encouraging Public Libraries to Abide by COPPA?
“The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) was created to prevent corporations from collecting data about children without parental permission. This law explicitly does not apply to public institutions, non-profits, and government agencies. Yet, many public institutions not only choose not to collect data about children; they forbid children from accessing information without parental permission. Much to my surprise, this includes many public libraries. Dear Librarians… Will you help explain something to me?”
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2012/02/20/libraries-coppa.html

Regulations.gov: Remaking Public Participation
“On January 18, 2011, the President issued Executive Order 13563, in which he directed regulatory agencies to base regulations on an “open exchange of information and perspectives” and to promote public participation in Federal rulemaking.  The President identified Regulations.gov as the centralized portal for timely public access to regulatory content online. In response to the President’s direction, Regulations.gov has launched a major redesign, including innovative new search tools, social media connections, and better access to regulatory data.  The result is a significantly improved website that will help members of the public to engage with agencies and ultimately to improve the content of rules. The redesign of Regulations.gov also fulfills the President’s commitment in The Open Government Partnership National Action Plan to “improve public services,” including to “expand public participation in the development of regulations.” This step is just one of many, consistent with the National Action Plan, designed to make our Federal Government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative.”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/02/21/regulationsgov-remaking-public-participation

San Francisco Launches The 2012 Innovation Portfolio, From Open Taxi Data To Beta Tests In City Hall
“San Francisco may not have intended to be become the startup mecca that it is today, but now the city government is working hard to make itself as friendly as possible to tech entrepreneurs. Makes sense, considering that there are 1,539 tech companies and 30,000 tech jobs in the city now — a number that’s been growing fast as older industries like high finance continue to suffer through the recession. What that means is this. Mayor Ed Lee, who came to power last year with heavy support from the local tech scene, is announcing a new initiative today at the TechFellow awards ceremony, that has some intriguing ideas for making the city itself more relevant to the booming industry within it. Broadly, the so-called 2012 Innovation Portfolio is trying to do everything from helping founders by making it easier to complete the paperwork for creating a company, to giving developers new access to city data, to introducing new ways for citizens to share their opinions with the city, to actually testing out tech products at City Hall itself.”
http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/22/sftech/

Open Access

Groups Oppose Bill that Threatens to Cut Off Access to Taxpayer-Funded Research
“On February 9, thirty organizations, including SLA, sent a letter to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in opposition to the Research Works Act (H.R.3699), a bill designed to roll back a hard-fought-for policy that secured no-fee public access to NIH’s taxpayer-funded research, and also to block the development of similar policies at other federal agencies.”
http://slaconnections.typepad.com/public_policy_blog/2012/02/groups-oppose-bill-that-threatens-to-cut-off-access-to-taxpayer-funded-research.html

Letter From 90 Research Organizations Sent to Congress Opposing Research Works Act
“The undersigned organizations and institutions write to express our strong concerns with H.R. 3699, the Research Works Act, which has been referred to your Committee. This bill would impede public access to valuable research results from work funded by federal agencies.”
http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/lt_opresearchworksact_24feb12.pdf

Australia to make health research open access
“While America seriously considers the insane Research Works Act (banning the open publication of publicly-funded research), Australia is moving in the other direction. Its National Health and Medical Research Council has announced that all funded research will be made available to the public starting July.”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/21/nhmrc_going_open_access/

Privacy Concerns

Government Pressures Twitter to Hand Over Keys to Occupy Wall Street Protester’s Location Data Without a Warrant
“On October 1, 2011, over 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. Most of the protesters, including Malcolm Harris, were charged with the mundane crime of disorderly conduct, a “violation” under New York law that has a maximum punishment of 15 days in jail or a $250 fine. And yet on the basis of a charge no more consequential than speeding ticket, the New York City District Attorney’s office sent a poorly worded subpoena to Twitter requesting “any and all user information, including email address, as well as any and all tweets posted for the period of 9/15/2011-12/31/2011″ regarding Mr. Harris’ Twitter account, @destructuremal. Unsurprisingly, the government wanted to keep it quiet, but thankfully Twitter didn’t listen. Instead, as it has consistently warned law enforcement, Twitter notified Mr. Harris, who through his lawyer, Martin Stolar of the National Lawyers Guild, has moved to challenge the subpoena in court.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/malcolm-harris-occupy-wall-street-twitter-government-pressure

We Can’t Wait: Obama Administration Calls for A Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights for the Digital Age
“Today at the White House, the Obama Administration unveiled a blueprint for a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights to protect consumers online. . . In a related announcement, leading Internet companies and online advertising networks in the Digital Advertising Alliance came to the White House to commit to using Do Not Track technology now available in most major web browsers to make it easier for users to control online tracking.”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/02/23/we-can-t-wait-obama-administration-calls-consumer-privacy-bill-rights-digital-age

Internet Access

New CRS Report – Internet Governance and the Domain Name System: Issues for Congress (R42351)
“Currently, the U.S. government, through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) at the Department of Commerce, enjoys a unique influence over ICANN, largely by virtue of its legacy relationship with the Internet and the domain name system. A key issue for Congress is whether and how the U.S. government should continue to maximize U.S. influence over ICANN’s multistakeholder Internet governance process, while at the same time effectively resisting proposals for an increased role by international governmental institutions such as the U.N. The outcome of this debate will likely have a significant impact on how other aspects of the Internet may be governed in the future, especially in such areas as intellectual property, privacy, law enforcement, Internet free speech, and cybersecurity. Looking forward, the institutional nature of Internet governance could have far reaching implications on important policy decisions that will likely shape the future evolution of the Internet.”
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42351.pdf

The U.N. Threat to Internet Freedom
“On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year’s end. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June, his goal and that of his allies is to establish “international control over the Internet” through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a treaty-based organization under U.N. auspices. If successful, these new regulatory proposals would upend the Internet’s flourishing regime, which has been in place since 1988. . . Today, however, Russia, China and their allies within the 193 member states of the ITU want to renegotiate the 1988 treaty to expand its reach into previously unregulated areas. Reading even a partial list of proposals that could be codified into international law next December at a conference in Dubai is chilling.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204792404577229074023195322.html

How Internet Companies Would Be Forced to Spy on You Under H.R. 1981
“Online commentators are pointing to the Internet backlash against H.R. 1981 as the new anti-SOPA movement. While this bill is strikingly different from the Stop Online Piracy Act, it does have one thing in common: it’s a poorly-considered legislative attempt to regulate the Internet in a way experts in the field know will have serious civil liberties consequences. This bill specifically targets companies that provide commercial Internet access – like your ISP – and would force them to collect and maintain data on all of their customers, even if those customers have never been suspected of committing a crime. Under H.R. 1981, which has the misleading title of Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011, Congress would force commercial Internet access providers to keep for one year a “log of the temporarily assigned network addresses the provider assigns to a subscriber to or customer of such service that enables the identification of the corresponding customer or subscriber information under subsection (c)(2) of this section.”  Let’s break that down into simple terms.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/how-internet-companies-would-be-forced-spy-you-under-hr-1981

Intellectual Property

Young people’s free-wheeling view of copyrighted material shaping its future distribution
“Young people want their music, TV and movies now — even if it means they get these things illegally. A recent Columbia University survey found, in fact, that 70 per cent of 18- to 29-year-olds said they had bought, copied or downloaded unauthorized music, TV shows or movies, compared with 46 per cent of all adults who’d done the same. With such an entrenched attitude, what can be done about widespread online piracy? Certainly law enforcement has gone after scofflaws like these, hitting them with fines and, in some cases, even jail time. Congress is considering controversial anti-piracy bills that would, among other things, forbid search engines from linking to foreign websites accused of copyright infringement. And there are lawsuits pitting media heavyweights against Internet firms — notably Viacom’s billion-dollar litigation against YouTube. But here’s a radical notion to consider: What if young people who steal content weren’t viewed as the problem?”
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-bc-us–onlinepiracy-youth,0,3316423.story

EU suspends copyright treaty ratification
“The European Commission, facing opposition in city streets, on the Internet and in the halls of parliament, has suspended efforts to ratify a new international anti-counterfeiting agreement, and instead will refer it to Europe’s highest court to see whether it violates any fundamental EU rights. EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht asserted Wednesday that an opinion from the European Court of Justice would clear away the fog of misinformation surrounding the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, known as ACTA.”
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_EUROPE_INTERNET_PROTESTS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-02-22-10-27-11

International Outlook

This Isn’t a Hoax: Pakistan Requests Proposals for a National Filtering and Blocking System
“The Pakistani government is looking for new ways to censor the Internet. This week, the Pakistani Telecommunication Authority (PTA) released a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the development, deployment and operation of a “National Level URL Filtering and Blocking System,” calling on institutions to submit by March 2nd a feasible proposal that would allow the government to institute a large-scale filtering system. Shockingly, the RFP requires: “Each [filtering] box should be able to handle a block list of up to 50 million URLs (concurrent unidirectional filtering capacity) with processing delay of not more than 1 milliseconds.” While content filtering and blocking has existed in Pakistan for the past few years, it has been executed manually and has thus been inconsistent and intermittent. The state’s latest effort to subsidize a comprehensive, automated censorship regime is deeply troubling.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/not-a-hoax-pakistan-requests-proposals-national-filtering-and-blocking-system

Please feel free to pass along in part or in its entirety.

The Intersect Alert is a newsletter of the Government Relations Committee, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Special Libraries Association.

Hello again, San Francisco Chapter!  As I announced last month, the theme of my chapter presidency this year is COMMUNITY.   Now I’m excited to announce a big change that I feel will improve chapter communications and keep us all more in touch with one another.  We’re moving Bayline to the web.!

An electronic newsletter is something the board has considered several times in the past, but it’s only with the rollout of the new website that we feel we’re able to do this effectively.  If you haven’t seen the new website yet, check it out now.  The URL is much easier to remember: http://sanfrancisco.sla.org/.

Once you’re on the website, you’ll see a tab for Bayline.  Beginning with this post you can expect to see postings to this section at least weekly.  These articles will replace the PDF Bayline, and the February issue you just received is the last one you’ll receive in that format, but past PDF issues will remain archived on the site.

We know that most of our members prefer push communications, though, so if you forget to check the site, don’t worry.  Once a month we’ll send an e-mail to the reflector list summarizing all the new content that has been added.  It will be similar to the current PDF distribution, but instead of downloading a PDF, you’ll be able to click through to the articles.

You’ll still see all of the Bayline features you’ve come to expect, including Mosaic and event summaries for all our programs, but you’ll see them in a much more timely way.  I’ll be posting news from Leadership Summit in this section very soon.  We’re also exploring new content to integrate into the site, including member profiles.  We welcome ideas for new content, as well as article submissions.  Send your ideas to our Bayline editor, Alys Tryon, at bayline@sanfrancisco.sla.org.  And if you have questions or concerns, you’re always welcome to contact me at president@sanfrancisco.sla.org.

Of course, our events are still the core of our chapter community.  This month, we have an exciting Professional Development opportunity.  Past-President Eris Weaver will present “Quick & Dirty Strategic Planning”.  Details and registration forms are found here: http://sanfrancisco.sla.org/category/events/.

I hope many of you will join us for this exciting and interactive session.

Freedom of Information

Transparency on government spending: The missing links
“When I started reporting in Washington in the pre-Internet days, the first Monday in February brought a familiar ritual: Journalists rushed around town trying to squeeze in as many federal budget briefings as they could and returned to their offices with a huge stack of paper. . . Since then, documents have become digitized, and the Web has made data accessible around the clock. Hard work has gone into USAspending.gov and Recovery.gov to make spending details available to the public. But even with all the advances in IT in the past two decades, when I searched the Web last week to find out how much the Smithsonian Institution spent on digitization projects in recent years, I was out of luck. A helpful staffer gave me the available information over the phone. For now, the idea of a fully transparent federal budget publicly accessible online is just that — an idea. But a few people are trying to raise it to the next level.”
http://fcw.com/articles/2012/02/15/home-page-gov-20-transparency-spending.aspx

Video for Legislative Data and Transparency Conference now online
The Committee on House Administration held a Legislative Data and Transparency Conference on February 2, 2012. Video and presentation slides from the evnt are now available online.
Panel 1: Legislative Branch Initiatives
Panel 2: Legislative Branch Initiatives
Panel 3: What is data and what is available?
Panel 4: Extending XML and Metadata Standards
Panel 5: Integrating Video and Metadata
Panel 6: Defining Transparency Success Measures
http://cha.house.gov/about/contact-us/legislative-data-conference

Pentagon Discloses Military Intelligence Budget Request
“From a secrecy policy point of view, the Administration’s FY 2013 budget proposal that was released yesterday contained one surprise:  The Department of Defense disclosed the amount of its request for the Military Intelligence Program (MIP).  This is something that the Pentagon has never done before and indeed had refused to do.”
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2012/02/mip_request.html

First steps toward more trustworthy online state legal materials: UELMA is introduced in three states
“The years-long effort to address the reliability of online primary legal materials at the state level finally reached the floors of statehouses across the country when bills to enact the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA) (pdf, 95kb) were introduced in Tennessee, Colorado, and California over a three week period from late January to mid-February.”
http://govdocsblog.kentlaw.edu/wordpress/index.php/2012/02/first-steps-toward-more-trustworthy-online-state-legal-materials-uelma-is-introduced-in-three-states/

The Department of Defense Needs Only One Paragraph to Illustrate Why the Declassification System is Broken
“Should a 29-year-old document about a military drill against the (no longer existent) Soviet Union really need to be reviewed by fourteen different declassification reviewers at fourteen different agencies and components?  Under the current declassification system, yes.  And that is why the current system is broken.”
http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/document-friday-the-department-of-defense-needs-only-one-paragraph-to-illustrate-why-the-declassification-system-is-broken/

Watch Senate Floor Video on Senate.gov
“Last fall I blogged about where you can watch Congress online.  Now there is another place: the Senate’s website. From that site you can watch the Senate floor proceedings live, search and watch from the archive, and browse the archive by date.  The Advanced Search options include captions, all words, exact phrase, or, not, and a date range.  There is also a link to a summary of what was on the Senate floor for any given date.  The available videos start in January with the beginning of the 2nd session of the 112th Congress.”
http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2012/02/watch-senate-floor-video-on-senate-gov/

An Open Innovation Toolbox
“The Obama Administration’s innovation agenda is aimed at finding, testing, and scaling new ideas that change the way government conducts business and delivers services through engagement with the American people.  An innovative government incorporates an entrepreneurial mindset into its daily work – taking risks, building lean organizations, and developing innovative products and services faster than the rest of the world. On his last day in office, then-U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra released the Open Innovator’s Practitioner’s Toolbox.  It contains 20 of the best disruptive innovation practices conceived and built by entrepreneurs across government.  They provide a rich set of guiding principles that any Federal, state, and local government can use to support rapid innovation supporting economic growth and job creation.”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/02/14/open-innovation-toolbox

Georgia Legislature considers overhaul of sunshine laws
“Georgia’s sunshine laws, used for decades to open up state and local governments to public scrutiny, expose corruption and let taxpayers know how their money’s being spent, could undergo a major overhaul this year for the first time in more than a decade. A key House subcommittee Wednesday heard testimony on legislation that has been months in the making and vetted by key stakeholders — representatives of First Amendment groups, the news media, and government commissions, councils and boards.”
http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-government/georgia-legislature-considers-overhaul-1350505.html

EPA, Commerce take lead in developing “FOIA Portal”
“A buzz is growing in the federal Freedom of Information community about a new $1.3 million “FOIA Portal” under development and slated for launch this fall. Thursday we got a chance to look under the hood a bit, as part of a group organized by the Office of Government of Information Services.”
http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/blogs/exemption-10/posts/2012/feb/16/epa-commerce-take-lead-developing-foia-portal/

Help Open States Rate State Websites
“As Open States closes in on our initial goal of supporting all 50 state legislatures (just 3 more to go!) we’re also planning to put out a report card evaluating the availability of state legislative data across every state. . . In order to guarantee a high quality report we’d like to get several responses per state and that’s where you can help us out. Click the link below to head to a form that will ask you to evaluate the information that your state legislature makes available via their official website. By doing this you’ll help us ensure that our eventual report is as accurate and as complete as possible.”
http://sunlightlabs.com/blog/2012/help-open-states-rate-state-websites/

Justice Department Wins Rosemary Award for Worst Open Government Performance in 2011
“The U.S. Department of Justice has won the infamous Rosemary Award for worst open government performance over the past year, according to the citation posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive. The award is named after President Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, who erased 18 1/2 minutes of a crucial Watergate tape. The Rosemary Award citation includes a multi-count indictment of Justice’s transparency performance in 2011, including. . .”
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20120214/index.htm

Department of Justice Increases FOIA Releases and Reduces FOIA Backlogs
“The Department of Justice continues to lead by example in its administration of the FOIA, closing out Fiscal Year 2011 with significant accomplishments. Despite three straight years of receiving record high numbers of FOIA requests — over 60,000 requests for each of the past three years — the Department processed a record number of those requests. In doing so, the Department released records in full or in part for 94.5% of requests involving responsive records, which marks the second straight year the Department has achieved such a high release rate. Even more significantly, the Department increased the number of responses to requests where records were released in full.”
http://www.justice.gov/oip/foiapost/2012foiapost2.html

Public Policy

New Hampshire Legislature Passes Open-Source Software Bill
“The New Hampshire state legislature recently passed a bill that makes open data and open source software included by default in the state’s procurement process.  The bill, HB 418, requires government officials to consider open-source products when making new technology acquisitions and only purchase products that comply with open data standards. Last year, Nick Judd covered how the New Hampshire legislature changed with the addition of several “geeks” to the House of Representatives and the passage of this new legislation shows a growing culture of friendliness to the tech concept of “open” in the statehouse. It is currently on its way to the governor’s desk for signing.  Open source advocates say the New Hampshire bill represents an evolution for open software in government.”
http://techpresident.com/news/21761/new-hampshire-legislature-passes-open-source-software-bill

State Integrity Investigation releases preliminary data on government transparency
“Do you ever get the feeling that you don’t know the first thing about your state’s government? More than likely, its by no fault of your own; U.S. state governments are notoriously closed-off, and even more difficult to compare to one another. So for the first time, extensive data looking at transparency in U.S. state governments has been made public. The State Integrity Investigation released its preliminary findings — a set of more than 300 indicators to determine the risk of government corruption — for all 50 states.”
http://www.iwatchnews.org/2012/02/14/8162/state-integrity-investigation-releases-preliminary-data-government-transparency

Electronic Government Fund Would Grow Slightly Under President’s Plan
“Important government transparency programs would receive a small boost if the President’s proposed budget for FY 2013 were enacted. The Electronic Government Fund, which supports Data.gov, the IT Spending Dashboard, and USASpending.gov, among other programs, would increase by $4.2 million in FY 2013, from $12.4 million in FY 2013 to $16.665 million in FY 2013. This is still far less than the $34 million appropriated in FY 2009 and FY 2010, but would make an appreciable difference in supporting or expanding transparency initiatives.”
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/02/14/electronic-government-fund-would-grow-slightly-under-presidents-plan/

Open Access

A Decade of Open Access (And the Challenges Ahead)
“Ten years ago this week, the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) was released to the public. This seminal document explained how technology could revolutionize academic publishing, and defined “open access” as the free and unrestricted availability of peer-reviewed journal literature online. Perhaps most importantly, the BOAI laid out a strategy for making open access a reality. In the decade since its publication, the 13 original signatories behind the initiative have been joined by a still-growing collection of over 5500 individuals and 600 organizations.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/decade-open-access-and-challenges-ahead

Intellectual Property

Loosen up copyright law, says Dutch government
“The YouTube generation has gained an ally in the worldwide “copyright wars.” The Dutch government wants to change copyright law so new media users can continue to do “creative remixes” of protected content. The Hague will no longer wait for the European Commission to find a compromise.”
http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/loosen-copyright-law-says-dutch-government

ACTA Doubts Rampant In Europe; Industry Call For “Reasoned Assessment”
“Europeans came out by the thousands this week to protest the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), as it goes before the parliament and the remaining governments that have not yet signed on. But a large number of industry associations sent a letter pushing officials to carefully consider the agreement before dismissing it under popular pressure.”
http://www.ip-watch.org/2012/02/13/acta-doubts-rampant-in-europe-industry-call-for-%e2%80%9creasoned-assessment%e2%80%9d/

EU Court of Justice: Social Networks Can’t Be Forced to Monitor and Filter to Prevent Copyright Infringement
“In another important victory for Internet users’ fundamental rights and the open Internet, the highest court in Europe ruled yesterday that social networks cannot be required to monitor and filter their users’ communications to prevent copyright infringement of music and movies.  The European Court of Justice (ECJ) found that imposing a broad filtering obligation on social networks would require active monitoring of users’ files in violation of EU law and could undermine citizens’ freedom of expression.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/eu-court-justice-social-networks

Please feel free to pass along in part or in its entirety.

The Intersect Alert is a newsletter of the Government Relations Committee, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Special Libraries Association.

Freedom of Information

Senators Take a Pass on Electronic Filing. Again.
“By an overwhelming majority, Senators passed the STOCK Act, a bill Majority Leader Reid described as, “a critical step toward restoring Americans’ faith in Congress” but failed—in fact actively prevented—to allow a vote on an amendment that would have required Senators and Senate candidates to electronically file their campaign finance reports.”
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/02/07/senators-take-a-pass-on-electronic-filing-again/

Freedom of Information Act Portal Would Boost Responsiveness, Improve Efficiency
“An interagency project underway could revolutionize implementation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and significantly improve transparency and efficiency. The project to develop a government-wide portal for FOIA requests, a goal long supported by the open government community, could deliver as soon as this fall.”
http://www.ombwatch.org/node/11973

Building a Better Energy.gov: How DOE Can Take Steps Towards Achieving the Principles of Open Government
“The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists recently took to task Energy.gov, the newly relaunched webT presence of the Department of Energy (DOE). Science writer Dawn Stover detailed her difficulties finding an important 2002 document about the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, concluding that Energy.gov may be more visually pleasing than it is useful. DOE responded the following week with a new page for Yucca Mountain and improved search functions for the related documents. While the agency said it’s proud of the new Energy.gov, it admitted that it’s not done migrating documents to the new site and making them searchable. Making it easy for the public to find documents online is certainly a good step. But this whole exchange reminded POGO of just how much DOE information isn’t even publicly available in the first place.”
http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2012/02/building-a-better-energygov-how-doe-can-take-steps-towards-achieving-the-principles-of-open-governme.html

DoD Inspector General Takes on Classification Oversight
“In a move that can only strengthen and improve oversight of the national security classification system, the Department of Defense Inspector General has begun a far-reaching review of Pentagon classification policy. Among other things, the Inspector General review will focus on “efforts by the Department to decrease over-classification.””
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2012/02/dodig_class.html
Read the Inspector General memorandum

SC Bill would limit fees charged for Freedom of Information requests
“A bill sponsored by S.C. Rep. Bill Taylor, R-Aiken, would make it cheaper and faster for citizens to get copies of public documents using the state Freedom of Information Act, officials from the S.C. Press Association said.”
http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/0209-bill-taylor-legislation–3777220

The CIA’s Covert Operation Against Declassification Review and Obama’s Open Government
“This very important Document Friday features a very obscure document, just two pages (59033 and 59034) that the Central Intelligence Agency printed in the Federal Register on Friday, 23 September 2011 –without a notice for public comment.  These regulations, which the CIA began enforcing in December, are a covert attack on the most effective tool that the public uses to declassify the CIA’s secret documents, Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR).”
http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/the-cias-covert-operation-against-declassification-review-and-obamas-open-government/

House Democrats Introduce DISCLOSE 2012
“House Democrats unveiled The DISCLOSE 2012 Act (HR 4010) today, a crucial step toward transparency to address the corrupting influence unlimited, secret corporate and union money is having on our elections and our elected officials.”
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/02/09/house-democrats-introduce-disclose-2012/

Public Policy

Goodbye, state funding for California libraries
“The bad news is that state funding for California libraries has been completely eliminated. There’s not really any good news about that except that it was expected. This past July, state library funding was sliced in half, and there was a trigger amendment attached to the budget that would eliminate state funding for public libraries at midyear if the state’s revenue projections were not met. Needless to say, they weren’t.”
http://kalw.drupal.publicbroadcasting.net/post/goodbye-state-funding-california-libraries

Digital History

Yes We Scan Again! The Archives chats with voters on a “We the People” teleconference
“On January 10th, I blogged about the “Yes We Scan” petitions proposed by Carl Malamud’s PublicResource.org on the White House’s We The People petition platform. “Yes We Scan” calls for a national strategy, and even a Federal Scanning Commission, to figure out what it would take to digitize the holdings of many federal entities, from the Library of Congress to the Government Printing Office to the Smithsonian Institution. I have been delighted to see the many ideas discussed in response to that blogpost. I encourage you to keep them coming! Following that initial post, I worked with the White House Director of New Media, Macon Phillips, and the Director of Online Engagement, Katelyn Sabochik, to set up a conference call, inviting those who voted for the Yes We Scan petition (about 2,500 signers total) to further discuss this important issue and hear your ideas on how to move forward.”
http://blogs.archives.gov/aotus/?p=3965
Archivist Ferriero’s opening comments for the teleconference

SD State archives going digital
“The South Dakota State Historical Society’s Archives has gone digital. The State Archives, in the Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre, collects, preserves, and makes available manuscript collections, South Dakota state, county and local government records, photographs, maps and other archival materials which have permanent historical and research value. Now, the South Dakota Digital Archives, an online resource that went live in January, makes these collections more accessible to the public, as well as to protect the originals.”
http://www.argusleader.com/article/20120210/NEWS/302100016/State-archives-going-digital

New Montana state librarian leads digitization
“Not that long ago, the Montana State Library, in charge of making state documents available to the public, circulated just a few hundred publications outside its walls each year. Now, in just the past three months, the library has circulated some 18,000 digital documents, and what’s available is vast: state agency reports going back years, and data-rich natural resource and geographic information resources covering everything form moisture levels to property ownership to oil and gas leases.”
http://helenair.com/news/local/new-state-librarian-leads-digitization/article_c1fee8f6-5216-11e1-a8d5-0019bb2963f4.html

Open Access

Why scientists are boycotting a publisher
“The scientific community finds itself at the beginning of its own Arab Spring. At stake are values that all Americans hold dear: the free flow of information and the continued betterment of human life. Success is by no means guaranteed, but it’s an important protest movement in which Boston should play a special role.”
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/02/12/why-scientists-are-boycotting-publisher/9sCpDEP7BkkX1INfakn3NL/story.html

Congressman Doyle Introduces Bill to Ensure Public Access to Federally-Funded Research
“U.S. Representative Mike Doyle (D-PA) today introduced bipartisan legislation that directs federal agencies to encourage open public access to federally funded scientific research. . . The Federal Research Public Access Act would require federal agencies with an extramural research budget of $100 million or more to make federally-funded research available for free online access by the general public, no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.”
http://doyle.house.gov/press-releases-1/2012/02/doyle-introduces-bill-to-ensure-public-access-to-federally-funded-research.shtml

Intellectual Property

Golan v. Holder: A Farewell to Constitutional Challenges to Copyright Laws
From a summary of the recent Golan v. Holder decision by the Supreme Court written by attorney Jonathan Brand for the Library Copyright Alliance:
“On January 13, 2012, the Supreme Court by a 6-2 vote affirmed the Tenth Circuit decision in Golan v. Holder. (Justice Kagan recused herself, presumably because of her involvement in the case while she was Solicitor General.) The case concerned the constitutionality of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), which restored copyright in foreign works that had entered into the public domain because the copyright owners had failed to comply with formalities such as notice; or because the U.S. did not have copyright treaties in place with the country at the time the work was created (e.g., the Soviet Union). The petitioners were orchestra conductors, musicians, and publishers who enjoyed free access to works removed by URAA from the public domain. The Court in its decision made clear that constitutional challenges to a copyright statute would not succeed so long as the provision does not have an unlimited term, and does not tread on the idea/expression dichotomy or the fair use doctrine. Justice Breyer wrote a strong dissent that contains many interesting observations concerning the economic theory of copyright; how the URAA reflects a European rather than American approach to copyright; orphan works; and the causes of infringement. The American Library Association (ALA), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) joined an amicus brief written by Electronic Frontier Foundation in support of reversal. This brief, referred to as the ALA brief, received significant attention in both the majority and dissenting opinions.”
http://www.librarycopyrightalliance.org/bm~doc/golan_summary_06feb12.pdf

Don’t Let the U.S. Pressure Canada into Repeating The Same Mistakes
“In countries across the world, content copyright industries have been lobbying for laws that would break the Internet in the name of copyright enforcement. Such regulations could terminate user access to the Internet on an allegation of copyright infringement, enact website blocking powers that would make parts of the global Internet disappear from view, and impose digital locks laws that stifle online innovation and restrict the ability to use lawfully acquired digital content. Canada is the latest target. With Canada’s Copyright Modernization Act (Bill C-11) returning to committee in the Canadian Parliament, now is the time for Canadian netizens to take action to protect the free and open Internet by signing the petition jointly supported by OpenMedia.ca and the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC).”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/don%E2%80%99t-let-us-pressure-canada-repeating-same-mistakes

International Outlook

Iran Ratchets Up Its Internet Censorship
“This week has seen a marked increase in the blocking and filtering of certain kinds of Internet traffic in Iran. The Iranian government has not openly acknowledged these new measures, but they are widely thought to be preliminary steps towards a nation-wide Halal Internet that would cut off a majority of citizens from the global web and replace it with one that would effectively block all foreign sites and only allow state-controlled content to e accessed within Iran. Starting February 7th, Internet users in Iran began reporting that they were having difficulty reaching certain websites outside of the country using HTTPS, the secure, encrypted version of the HTTP protocol used to transfer the data you see in your web browser. Many websites, including banks, many Google services, Twitter, Facebook, and Microsoft Hotmail, employ HTTPS to protect their users’ private data from eavesdropping and government surveillance.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/iran-ratchets-its-internet-censorship

How Open Society Grantees Are Advancing Access to Public Information in Latin America
“Since the landmark legal decision Marcel Claude Reyes and Others v. Chile of the Inter-American Human Rights Court in 2006, the right to access public information has increasingly been recognized by Latin America’s governments as a human right.  Fourteen of the region’s nineteen countries have access to public information laws, more than any other developing region in the world.”
http://blog.soros.org/2012/02/how-open-society-grantees-are-advancing-access-to-public-information-in-latin-america/

From the UK: Library Closures Inquiry Begins
“MPs have begun hearing evidence at a Select Committee inquiry on library closures. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has been requesting views on the service since November. Witnesses giving evidence on Tuesday said closures would have a negative impact on local communities.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16924333
Read the full text of the Public Inquiry Responses

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The Intersect Alert is a newsletter of the Government Relations Committee, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Special Libraries Association.

It’s not too early to start planning for SLA 2012 in Chicago. This year the Annual Conference & INFO-EXPO will be held July 15 – 18 at the McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois. Early bird registration opens on February 27. Click on the links below for conference and accommodations information.

SLA 2012 Conference page

SLA 2012 Registration and Fees page

SLA 2012 Hotel Reservations

Explore Chicago – Official Tourism Site

Freedom of Information

EPA Releases New Tool with Information about Water Pollution Across the U.S.
“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the release of a new tool that provides the public with important information about pollutants that are released into local waterways. Developed under President Obama’s transparency initiative, the Discharge Monitoring Report (DMR) Pollutant Loading Tool brings together millions of records and allows for easy searching and mapping of water pollution by local area, watershed, company, industry sector, and pollutant. Americans can use this new tool to protect their health and the health of their communities.”
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/d0cf6618525a9efb85257359003fb69d/bea828c1bc08917985257990006c362c!OpenDocument

Agencies are Likely to Miss 2013 Declassification Deadline
“More than two years ago, President Obama set a December 31, 2013 deadline for completing the declassification processing of a backlog of more than 400 million pages of classified historical records that were over 25 years old.  But judging from the limited progress to date, it now seems highly unlikely that the President’s directive will be fulfilled. As of December 2011, following two years of operation, the National Declassification Center had completed the processing of only 26.6 million pages of the 400 million page backlog, according to the latest NDC semi-annual report.  If the Center increased productivity by a factor of ten, that would still be insufficient to achieve its goal. The looming failure to comply with an explicit presidential order is a sign of the growing autonomy of the secrecy system, which to a surprising extent is literally out of control.”
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2012/01/miss_deadline.html

With Chopra Gone, Is Open Government in Jeopardy?
“With U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra’s resignation last week and the departure of former U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra last year, the federal brain trust behind the Obama administration’s Open Government Directive has officially left the building. Is the movement they championed far behind? At least one expert believes the writing is on the wall for open government, unless new ways can be found to use big data more effectively within the federal government’s operational structure.”
http://www.govtech.com/policy-management/With-Chopra-Gone-Is-Open-Government-in-Jeopardy.html

“Declassification-As-Usual” Mindset Responsible for the National Declassification Center’s Languid Pace
“On December 29, 2009, President Obama created the National Declassification Center (NDC) and instructed it to review the entire 400 million page backlog of historic documents at the National Archives (NARA) for declassification by December 31, 2013.  Three years later, a mere 22.6 million pages (5.8 percent of the backlog) has been made available to researchers.  Despite the president’s instruction for a new type of declassification process at the NDC, the continued “declassification-as-usual” mindset is responsible for the Center’s languid pace.”
http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/declassification-as-usual-mindset-responsible-for-the-national-declassifcation-centers-lanugid-pace/

House to live-stream committee proceedings
“The House is now offering live video streaming of committee proceedings online through the Library of Congress. The Committee on House Administration announced on Thursday that the live webcasts would be available at http://thomas.loc.gov/video/house-committee. The Library of Congress also will archive previous committee proceedings, which the panel said would create the first “one-stop shop for House committee video content.””
http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/208281-house-to-live-stream-committee-proceedings

Bulk Data at the House Legislative Data Conference
“The morning’s last panel featured the leaders of the offices responsible for most legislative data processes — like the Office of Law Revision Counsel, the Law Library of Congress, and the Government Printing Office.  We saw valuable new projects — mobile sites, web redesigns, and incremental improvements in data publication. All worthy efforts showing the legislative support bureaucracy adapting to new expectations for online information. In cultivating these projects, though, these offices are also choosing to ignore another responsibility: their role in providing the data about Congress that enables third party web publishers (like Sunlight) to do their jobs. The officials were asked (by a number of us from Sunlight) why they still haven’t begun publishing bulk legislative data, and their answers were telling: it’s not a priority, they’re more concerned about accuracy.”
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/02/02/bulk-data-at-the-house-legislative-data-conference/

Data Dreams
“The government launched its massive data set trove Data.gov in 2009 with a clear mission: to put information the government was gathering anyway into the hands of private sector and nonprofit Web and mobile app developers. Once that data was out, the White House imagined, developers would set about turning it into useful products—optimizing Census Bureau statistics for marketers; Commerce Department data for exporters; and Housing and Urban Development Department information for building contractors, mortgage brokers and insurance adjusters. When necessary, the government also would be able to prime the pump with agency-sponsored code-a-thons and app development competitions sponsored through Challenge.gov, a White House initiative that paid out $38 million to prize-winning developers during its first year, which ended in September. But turning government data into private sector products has proved more complicated in practice. Some agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, are posting new data sets regularly and rapidly in machine-readable form, but other agencies have shown little interest in devoting dwindling resources to making data more accessible. Agency data publication schedules also are often too slow for the go-go world of mobile apps.”
http://www.govexec.com/magazine/nextgov/2012/02/data-dreams/40992/

Public Policy

FCC Pushes E-Textbooks on U.S. Schools Facing Budget Crunch
“A Federal Communications Commission effort to bring digital textbooks to U.S. students faces resistance from schools with limited budgets for buying devices such as Apple Inc.’s iPad tablet computer. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced plans yesterday to get all U.S. students from kindergarten through the 12th grade using electronic titles within five years. The initiative, which doesn’t involve any additional U.S. government funding, is meant to speed adoption of e-textbooks. The U.S. spends $7 billion a year on textbooks, and digital versions are the exception, rather than the rule, Genachowski said.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-01/fcc-calls-for-u-s-students-to-have-e-textbooks-in-five-years.html

Open Access

Public Access to Scholarly Publications: Public Comment
“On November 3, 2011, OSTP released a Request for Information (RFI) soliciting public input on long-term preservation of, and public access to, the results of federally funded research, including peer-reviewed scholarly publications as required in the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010. Below are the public comments received by OSTP during the comment period. You can read the RFI on public access to scholarly publications here. Comments on the questions in the RFI were accepted through January 12, 2012.”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp/library/publicaccess

Elsevier’s Publishing Model Might be About to Go Up in Smoke
“Academic publishing is a very good game indeed if you can manage to get into it. As the publisher the work is created at the expense of others, for free to you. There are no advances, no royalties, to pay. The editing, the checking, the decisions about whether to publish, these are all also done for free to you. And the market, that’s every college libarary in the world and they’re very price insensitive indeed. Back when physical, paper, copies of the journals were an essential part of any scientists’ life the cost structure could, perhaps, be justified. It is expensive to typeset, proofread, complex texts and then print them in numbers of hundreds or perhaps low thousands. However, now that everything is moving/has moved online then the amounts charged for access to the journals seems less defensible. More like the exploitation of a monopoly position in fact. . . However, there’s something happening that might change this, for Reed Elsevier shareholders, quite delightful position. That is, a revolt of the academics who provide both the papers and the readership.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/01/28/elseviers-publishing-model-might-be-about-to-go-up-in-smoke/
See also The Chronicle of Higher Education article: Elsevier Publishing Boycott Gathers Steam Among Academics

Privacy Concerns

European Commission Proposes Stronger Data Privacy Legislation
“After weeks of suspense and rumors, last Wednesday the European Commission finally introduced long-awaited legislation to update the 1995 Data Protection Directive, the primary instrument governing personal privacy in Europe.  These changes had been widely anticipated by the privacy community, and were spurred in large part by two distinct motivations: (1) the desire to provide users stronger rights over their personal information, and (2) a wish to harmonize divergent privacy laws across all the European Union.”
https://www.cdt.org/blogs/justin-brookman/22european-commission-proposes-stronger-data-privacy-legislation

International Outlook

Power of books celebrated by UN chief as new library opens in Ethiopian capital
“Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon celebrated the benefits that books can bring to young people as he opened a library at an Ethiopian primary school that has been established under an innovative United Nations scheme. At a ceremony yesterday in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, Mr. Ban took part in the hand over of a “Thank You Small Library (TYSL),” which will now be used by the roughly 1,200 pupils attending Keykokeb primary school. At least 110 separate libraries have been created in 15 countries – mostly in sub-Saharan Africa – since 2007, when the so-called TYSL initiative began.”
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=41096&Cr=ethiopia&Cr1=

With GOV.UK, British government redefines the online government platform
“The British Government has launched a beta of its GOV.UK platform, testing a single domain for that could be used throughout government. The new single government domain will eventually replace Directgov, the UK government portal which launched back in 2004. GOV.UK is aimed squarely as delivering faster digital services to citizens through a much improved user interface at decreased cost. Unfortunately, far too often .gov websites cost millions and don’t deliver as needed. GOV.UK is open source, mobile-friendly, platform agnostic, uses HTML5, scalable, hosted in the cloud and open for feedback. Those criteria collectively embody the default for how government should approach their online efforts in the 21st century.”
http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/01/with-govuk-british-government.html

Please feel free to pass along in part or in its entirety.

The Intersect Alert is a newsletter of the Government Relations Committee, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Special Libraries Association.