Category «E-Government»

Social Security Website Crashes as DOGE-Linked Disruption at the Agency Continues

Gizmodo: “Key parts of the Social Security website have proven inaccessible over the past week, and the agency now says that it is probing the cause of the service disruptions. The problems come not long after the agency compelled retirees to seek help more exclusively online, as it attempts to downsize its phone operations. Last …

Subjects: E-Government, E-Records, Economy, Financial System, Government Documents, Search Engines

LLRX March 2025 Issue – 8 new articles 7 new columns

LLRX.com March 2025 Issue Censor, purge, defund: how Trump is following the authoritarian playbook on science and universities – Professor of Operational Research Christina Pagel Climate and DEI Deleted From Government Websites, Federal Workers Fired, Colleges Erase Programs, Law Firms Blackballed, Holocaust Denied – This March 27, 2025 update by Sabrina I. Pacifici chronicles Trump’s …

Subjects: AI, Censorship, Civil Liberties, Climate Change, Cybersecurity, E-Government, E-Records, Economy, Education, Environmental Law, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Health Care, Medicine, Privacy

RFK Jr.‘s bloodbath at HHS: Blowback grows as losses become clearer

ACLU sues National Institutes of Health for ‘ideological purge’ of research projects – The lawsuit says NIH has canceled more than 670 research grants, which were due more than $1.1 billion in funding. Ars Technica: “Last week, Health Secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the Trump administration would hack off nearly a …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, E-Government, Government Documents, Health Care, HIV/AIDS, Medicine

Ten weeks that shook the world

FT.com – On many fronts, and with deliberate haste, America is vaporising its soft power – “The US looks bound for a recession this year owing to the president’s actions. Civilisations are not murdered, said the historian Arnold Toynbee. They die from suicide. Though military clout and geographic fortune will sustain America, its republic is …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, E-Government, Economy, Education, Financial System, Government Documents, Health Care, Legal Research, Medicine

NOAA All AWS Services will soon be offline

“We are so glad you joined us. Safeguarding Research & Culture (SRC) — Distributing Cultural Memory “As researchers we often say ‘we need the data’. Today, the data needs us.” — Kathy Reid. NOAA all services, specifically Amazon Web Servies (URGENT) – Requests AWS Services for NOAA will be going offline as soon as tomorrow …

Subjects: Censorship, Climate Change, E-Government, Environmental Law, Government Documents

DOGE Put a College Student in Charge of Using AI to Rewrite Regulations

Wired [no paywall] – A DOGE operative has been tasked with using AI to propose rewrites to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s regulations—an effort sources are told will roll out across government…A young man with no government experience who has yet to even complete his undergraduate degree is working for Elon Musk’s so-called …

Subjects: AI, E-Government, E-Records, Education, Financial System, Government Documents, Housing, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

How Digital Archivists Are Saving Public Information from the Memory Hole

IEEE – “Through clever usage of APIs, the Library Innovation Lab at Harvard Law School has created an archive of Data.gov, home to 311,000 public datasets In the three decades since Brewster Kahle spun up the nonprofit Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, it has scaled up to include government websites and datasets—many of which are essential …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, E-Government, E-Records, Education, Energy, Environmental Law, Government Documents, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Libraries

Purge of climate data and DEI programs from government websites continues

Updates this week to my LLRX guide, Climate and DEI Deleted From Government Websites, Federal Workers Fired, Colleges Erase Programs, Law Firms Blackballed, Holocaust Erased The Guardian, March 26, 2025. Trump’s ‘climate’ purge deleted a new extreme weather risk tool. We recreated it | The Guardian has recreated a searchable climate future risk tool developed …

Subjects: Climate Change, E-Government, Environmental Law

The Data Hoarders Resisting Trump’s Purge

The New Yorker [no paywall]: “Can librarians and guerrilla archivists save the country’s files from DOGE? The deletions began shortly after Donald Trump took office. C.D.C. web pages on vaccines, H.I.V. prevention, and reproductive health went missing. Findings on bird-flu transmission vanished minutes after they appeared. The Census Bureau’s public repository went offline, then returned …

Subjects: Censorship, Climate Change, E-Government, E-Records, Education, Energy, Environmental Law, Government Documents, Health Care, Legal Research, Medicine

CISA Probationary Reinstatements Process Is a Farce

From the homepage of CISA: The Court issued a Temporary Restraining Order in Maryland, et al v. United States Dep’t of Agriculture, et al, No. 25-cv-00748, Docket No. 43 (D. Md.) (March 13, 2025). CISA is making every effort to individually contact all impacted individuals. However, to the extent that you have been terminated by CISA …

Subjects: Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Government, Legal Research

JFK Assassination Records – 2025 Documents Release

No smoking gun found in JFK assassination docs – National Archives March 18, 2025 Release – In accordance with President Donald Trump’s directive of March 17, 2025, all records previously withheld for classification that are part of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection are released. The National Archives has partnered with agencies across the …

Subjects: E-Government, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Legal Research