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Daily Archives: July 19, 2014

Fostering Innovation, Creating Jobs, Driving Better Decisions: The Value of Government Data

This report finds: Government data potentially guides trillions of dollars of investments each year. Government data helps governments to better target scarce resources, businesses stay competitive, and individuals stay informed about the communities in which they live. As the real world examples in this report demonstrate, individuals, businesses, other organizations, and governments use Government data to help make better informed decisions that are better, faster, and more plentiful because of the ready availability and high quality of Government data. The cost of Government data is small relative to its potential benefits. Since 2004, the Federal Government’s principal statistical agencies have spent an average of $3.7 billion annually on data collection, processing, and dissemination. This expenditure amounts to about three cents, per person, per day, and is only 0.02 percent of our roughly $17 trillion dollar economy. Government data is uniquely comprehensive, consistent, confidential, credible, relevant, and accessible. Acting alone, the private sector would likely provide only some of the types of data produced by the Government. The Federal Government is uniquely positioned to provide comprehensive, consistent, credible, relevant and accessible data, all while protecting confidentiality. Government data is used directly to support decision making, indirectly through commercially available value-added products, and as a benchmark and standard for private data products. Thus, the Government and the private sector complement each other.”

June jobless rates down in 22 states, up in 14; payroll jobs up in 33 states, down in 17

BLS news release: ‘Regional and state unemployment rates were generally little changed in June. Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia had unemployment rate decreases from May, 14 states had increases, and 14 states had no change, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Forty-nine states and the District of Columbia had unemployment rate… Continue Reading

The complicated challenges of archiving and retrieving government email

FCW.com: “When President Barack Obama signed a memorandum on the management of government records in November 2011, some touted it as the first significant action on the topic since Harry Truman signed the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act in 1949 and the Federal Records Act in 1950. More than six decades and 7 billion network devices later,… Continue Reading

Former State Dept Exec Calls Executive Order 12333 a “Legal Loophole” for Spying on Americans

EFF – “What kind of data is the NSA collecting on millions, or hundreds of millions, of Americans?” That’s the question John Napier Tye, a former StateDepartment section chief for Internet freedom, calls on the government to answer in his powerful op-ed published today by the Washington Post. In it, Tye calls the NSA’s surveillance operations abroad, conducted under Executive… Continue Reading

Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review

Holt-Lunstad J, Smith TB, Layton JB (2010) Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review. PLoS Med 7(7): e1000316. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316 “Humans are naturally social. Yet, the modern way of life in industrialized countries is greatly reducing the quantity and quality of social relationships. Many people in these countries no longer live in extended families or… Continue Reading

EPIC Files Lawsuit For Details of Government Profiling System

“EPIC has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit about a controversial government data mining program, operated by the Department of Homeland Security. The “Analytical Framework for Intelligence“ contains a vast amount of sensitive personal information obtained from government agencies and the private sector. The system is used by the DHS for link analysis, anomaly detection, pattern analysis, and… Continue Reading

Discovery Hub

“Exploratory search – Discovery Hub is an exploratory search engine built on top of the famous encyclopedia on the web, Wikipedia. The exploratory search is a new way to search the web, not to find what you are searching, but to find what you are not searching, and might be interesting for you! It allows performing queries in… Continue Reading