Monthly archives: March, 2013

New GAO Reports – Budget Issues, Information Sharing, Modernizing the Nuclear Security Enterprise, Renewable Energy, Water Infrastructure

Budget Issues – Effects of Budget Uncertainty from Continuing Resolutions on Agency Operations, GAO-13-464T, Mar 13, 2013 Information Sharing – Additional Actions Could Help Ensure That Efforts to Share Terrorism-Related Suspicious Activity Reports Are Effective, GAO-13-233, Mar 13, 2013 Modernizing the Nuclear Security Enterprise – Observations on DOE’s and NNSA’s Efforts to Enhance Oversight of …

Subjects: Government Documents

Freedom of Information Act Performance, 2012: Agencies Are Processing More Requests but Redacting More Often

Freedom of Information Act Performance, 2012: Agencies Are Processing More Requests but Redacting More Often. Center for Effective Government, March 13, 2013 “A building block of American democracy is the idea that citizens have a right to information about how their government works and what it does in their name. However, citizen access to public …

Subjects: Freedom of Information

POGO – Federal Governments Largest Contractors Have Paid Billions in Fines, Penalties

“The federal governments largest suppliers of goods and services have accumulated more than $59 billon in fines, penalties, and settlements since 1995 according to the Project On Government Oversights (POGO) Federal Contractor Misconduct Database. POGO has added 12 new entities to the database, including telecom giant Verizon Communications and health insurer Highmark. Verizon has 24 …

Subjects: Government Documents

TRAC- Immigration Court Backlog Reaches New High

“The number of cases awaiting resolution before the Immigration Courts has risen along with the average time these pending cases have been waiting. As of the end of February 2013, the backlog has reached a new all-time high of 325,296. According to the very latest data obtained and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse …

Subjects: Courts, Legal Research

Using Metadata as the Foundation for a Government-Wide FOIA Library

News release: “The Justice Departments Open Government Plan version 2.0 (PDF) announced a variety of new Department initiatives concerning the administration of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A key initiative of this plan was the development of metadata standards that would facilitate the ability of interested persons to search and retrieve documents across websites …

Subjects: E-Government, Freedom of Information, Internet

Research – Digital records could expose intimate details and personality traits of millions

“New research, published today in the journal PNAS, shows that surprisingly accurate estimates of Facebook users race, age, IQ, sexuality, personality, substance use and political views can be inferred from automated analysis of only their Facebook Likes – information currently publicly available by default. In the study, researchers describe Facebook Likes as a generic class …

Subjects: E-Commerce, Internet, Privacy

Report – Iraq: Still paying a high price after a decade of abuses

“Ten years after the US-led invasion ended the brutal rule of Saddam Hussein, Iraq remains enmeshed in a grim cycle of human rights abuses, including attacks on civilians, torture of detainees, unfair trials and widespread use of the death penalty, said Amnesty International in a new report today. Amnestys 82-page report – Iraq: A Decade …

Subjects: Civil Liberties

The Leaky Leviathan: Why the Government Condemns and Condones Unlawful Disclosures of Information

The Leaky Leviathan: Why the Government Condemns and Condones Unlawful Disclosures of Information, David Pozen, Columbia Law School. March 2013, Harvard Law Review, Forthcoming “The United States government leaks like a sieve. Presidents denounce the constant flow of classified information to the media from unauthorized, anonymous sources. National security professionals decry the consequences. And yet …

Subjects: Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Legal Research

Google Webmasters help for hacked sites

Videos and articles for hacked site recovery – Posted by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead: “We created a new Help for hacked sites informational series to help all levels of site owners understand how they can recover their hacked site. The series includes over a dozen articles and 80+ minutes of informational videos – …

Subjects: Cybercrime

Working Paper – Do economies stall? The international evidence

Do economies stall? The international evidence by Wai-Yip Alex Ho and James Yetman. Working Papers No 407, March 2013 A “stalling” economy has been defined as one that experiences a discrete deterioration in economic performance following a decline in its growth rate to below some threshold level. Previous efforts to identify stalls have focused primarily …

Subjects: Government Documents

FTC Staff Revises Online Advertising Disclosure Guidelines

News release: “The Federal Trade Commission today released new guidance for mobile and other online advertisers that explains how to make disclosures clear and conspicuous to avoid deception. Updating guidance known as Dot Com Disclosures, which was released in 2000, the newcover of dot com disclosures report FTC staff guidance, .com Disclosures: How to Make …

Subjects: E-Commerce

EPA Announces Cities with the Most Energy Star Buildings in the US

News release: “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a list of U.S. metropolitan areas with the most Energy Star certified buildings in 2012, highlighting how owners and managers of commercial buildings across the country are taking action on climate change while delivering real financial savings to the bottom line…In 2012, more than 20,000 Energy …

Subjects: Government Documents

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