Quartz: The EPA just revealed that staffers destroyed files under audit . “Employees at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) destroyed records they knew were being audited, a new memo posted to a government database reveals.”
government records
MuckRock: MuckRock gives a state-by-state look at your public records law
MuckRock: MuckRock gives a state-by-state look at your public records law. “There are 50 state records laws (51 counting Washington D.C.) all with different statutes, exemptions, and limitations that dictate what you can get from your state and local agencies. With the rules of access differing across the board, MuckRock provides an easy way to keep track of them all through our interactive database showcasing the best, the worst, and the confusing parts of state records law.”
In the Library’s Web Archives: Sorting through a Set of US Government PDFs (Library of Congress)
Library of Congress: In the Library’s Web Archives: Sorting through a Set of US Government PDFs. “The Digital Content Management section has been working on a project to extract and make available sets of files from the Library’s significant web archives holdings. This is another step to explore the web archives and make them more widely accessible and usable. Our aim in creating these sets is to identify reusable, ‘real world’ content in the Library’s digital collections, which we can provide for public access. The outcome of the project will be a series of datasets, each containing 1,000 files of related media types selected from .gov domains. We will announce and explore these datasets here on The Signal, and the data will be made available through LC Labs. Although we invite usage and interest from a wide range of digital enthusiasts, we are particularly hoping to interest practitioners and scholars working on digital preservation education and digital scholarship projects.”
Hindustan Times: Delhi’s archives and records, dating back to 1803, go online
Hindustan Times: Delhi’s archives and records, dating back to 1803, go online. “Centuries-old land records of the national Capital and other important government documents were made available online on Wednesday after deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia launched the web portal of Delhi Archives … Delhi Archives is a custodian of Delhi government records and was established in 1972 to preserve the archival heritage of the city. The department has archival records dating to 1803.”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Former Reed official charged with violating open records law
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Former Reed official charged with violating open records law. “The press secretary for former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has been cited for allegedly violating the Georgia Open Records Act in the first-ever criminal complaint filed in connection with the law, the state attorney general’s office announced Monday.”
Techdirt: Oregon Lawmaker Wants Public Records Requesters To Tell Gov’t Agencies What They Plan To Do With Released Documents
Techdirt: Oregon Lawmaker Wants Public Records Requesters To Tell Gov’t Agencies What They Plan To Do With Released Documents. “As if government agencies needed any new ways to thwart accountability and transparency. Oregon legislators are introducing a host of alterations to the state’s public records law, but one of those looks like nothing more than an easily-abusable tool to be wielded against public records requesters.”
TechCrunch: Transparency-seeking OPEN Government Data Act signed into law
TechCrunch: Transparency-seeking OPEN Government Data Act signed into law . “The federal government produces one hell of a lot of data, but despite desultory lurches toward usability, there’s little guarantee that it’s available in a way that makes it useful to anyone. That may change for the better with the OPEN Government Data Act, which the president signed into law last night. The act essentially requires federal agencies to default when possible to making data (and metadata) public, to publish that public data in a machine-readable format and catalog it online. It also mandates that chief data officers be appointed at those agencies to handle the process.”
