All,
I'm writing to give a general update on the status of our recommendations,
and to give some other various updates. The impact of this project has
always been, to some degree, contingent on the clout generated by the
distributed expertise of its participants. This list and project will
retain their unique productive appeal insofar as open interaction is
privileged over communications silos. It's difficult to keep conversations
from spinning off into small non-public sub-threads, especially since so
many people on this list have been reticent to dive into the conversation,
given their political or organizational affiliations, or the difficulty in
keeping up with a large amount of traffic. I'd prefer that we err on the
side of overdoing dialogue, especially when the constructive potential of
public interaction is so great. (The bias toward disclosure needs to be
balanced, of course, against creating a disincentive to interaction, which
is a distinction I consider often, both in terms of congressional
disclosure, and my own interactions.)
To that end, I'm going to be writing more about what I've been doing, and
more about the current state of transparency reform in the House (and
Senate, soon hopefully).
We're also going to have a lot to say in the coming months about awareness
online<http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/2007/08/17/opencongressorg-tools-r...>,
and political <http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/node/3825> and civic
information<http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/2007/08/17/crime-visualization/>
.
To get everyone caught up on what's been happening, I'm going to be writing
a series of emails and blog posts on each section of our report, and then
doing probably weekly updates on what new developments I've got to discuss.
Legislative Database:
Josh's post<http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/2007/07/04/legislative-xml-what-we...>on
the OHP blog gives the best update about what we're looking for and
what
already exists. I don't really have much to add to what he wrote (in great
detail) in that post, except that GovTrack continues to provide really
compelling examples of how better implementation of structured data can lead
to useful and creative combinations of data later. As more data streams
gain a semantic component, through either RDF or some similar stopgap
measure such as crowdsourcing (digg, wikis, etc), paid staff adding value
(cf. Congressional Quarterly), or new alternatives such as
daylife.com<http://www.daylife.com/>,
structured data will become a minimum expectation.
The transition to XML has been happening in the house for quite some time,
and will probably continue to do so, given all of the separate sets of data,
and users, and the need to make any kind of IT transition VERY smoothly and
VERY securely. When compared with the potential consequences private
companies work under, I think it's easier to understand why Congress lags
behind the private sector in adopting new technology. Clear priorities,
well thought out transitions, and funding immune to political manipulation
will all be essential to a Congress which becomes more technologically
capable, efficient, and transparent.
Preservation:
The other section I'd like to discuss today is preservation.
Concerns over preserving born-digital congressional documents come up
constantly and in reference to all of the other sections of the report.
Some of the biggest potential for large improvement exists in this area,
since we're doing such an incomplete job of this type of archiving and
preservation now. A good first step would be to fully fund the NDIIP
program, as I wrote in
reviewing<http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/2007/06/27/house-leg-branch-approp...>the
House Legislative Branch Appropriations report:
On Preservation: The report explains the the National Digitial Information
Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIP, under the LOC) isn't fully
funded this year. The committee seems to regret this, and would, if
approved, "authorize the transfer of funding between Library accounts that
might become available during the fiscal year to increase funding for this
program." I wonder to what degree they've considered the distributed Federal
Depository Library Program as a suitable adjunct to the centralized (read,
potentially less reliable) LOC program, especially since it would cost very
little to just make structure information available to federal depository
libraries, which could then engage in distributed digital preservation.
Either the LOC or the GPO (or NARA?) should gain the role of database
centralizing with a public access component. Many other projects could then
be taken on publicly (the value added ones).
I'd also like to be able to more clearly articulate the way in which an
empowered FDLP could help NARA, FDLP, or NDIIP to comprehensively back up
web-based congressional documents. Further help fleshing that out would be
appreciated.
I'll be writing more in the next few days about a few other sections of the
report.
John
--
John Wonderlich
Program Director
The Sunlight Foundation
(202) 742-1520 ext. 234
