Category «E-Government»

Congress.gov New, Tip, and Top

Library of Congress, In Custodia Legis: “In the previous release, we enhanced access to the Senate legislation actions overview display and added the ability to download the text of legislation in XML format. With this release, member profile pages for current members of the Senate now include a “committees” tab that lists the member’s committee assignments …

Subjects: Congress, E-Government, Government Documents, Legal Research

White House Webpage Pushing Save Our Elections Act

Using the federal government official White House site, the Save our Elections Now is pushing hard to force Congress to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act or the SAVE Act.  Quoting the text on this page the goals and rationale are as follows: A Valid ID Before Registering to Vote in a Federal Election …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Congress, E-Government, E-Records, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Legal Research, Legislation

A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

PDF Association: “We report on the technical aspects of the PDF files released by the US Department of Justice in connection with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The recent release of a tranche of files by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) under the “Epstein Files Transparency Act (H.R.4405)” has once again prompted many people …

Subjects: E-Government, E-Records, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Search Engines

Trump set off a surge of AI in the federal government. See what happened.

Washington Post: “As the Trump administration seeks to sweep away obstacles to developing artificial intelligence, the president’s team has brought its zeal for the new technology to the federal government itself. Orders came down from the White House budget office in April urging every corner of the government to deploy AI. “The Federal Government will …

Subjects: AI, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Government, E-Records, Economy, Government Documents, Legal Research

ICE and CBP’s Face-Recognition App Can’t Actually Verify Who People Are

Wired: “ICE has used Mobile Fortify to identify immigrants and citizens alike over 100,000 times, by one estimate. It wasn’t built to work like that—and only got approved after DHS abandoned its own privacy rules.The face-recognition app Mobile Fortify, now used by United States immigration agents in towns and cities across the US, is not …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, E-Government, E-Records, Free Speech, Legal Research, Privacy

CIA ends publication of its popular World Factbook reference tool

AP: Close the cover on the CIA World Factbook: “The spy agency announced Wednesday that after more than 60 years, it is shuttering the popular reference manual. The announcement posted to the CIA’s website offered no reason for the decision to end the Factbook, but it follows a vow from Director John Ratcliffe to end …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, E-Government, E-Records, Education, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Follow the Changes: 9 Ways Web Archives are Used in Digital Investigations

Internet Archive Blogs: “Digital journalists increasingly turn to web archives like the Wayback Machine to follow how things on the Internet break, change or disappear – from deleted posts to quietly edited pages. The web has become not only a source of information but also the subject of media investigations, prompting journalists, researchers and activists …

Subjects: E-Government, E-Records, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Search Engines

Data Checkup A health check for federal data collections

The dataindex.us team is excited to launch the Data Checkup – a comprehensive framework for assessing the health of federal data collections, highlighting key dimensions of risk and presenting a clear status of data well-being. When we started dataindex.us, one of our earliest tools was a URL tracker: a simple way to monitor whether a …

Subjects: Censorship, E-Government, E-Records, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Donald Trump Has Built a Clicktatorship

The Atlantic [no paywall]: Even the administration’s budget proposals read like Truth Social posts. “…No one better exemplifies the clicktatorship than the president himself. Trump routinely makes policy announcements via social media. Consider when, in August, he attempted to fire the Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook on Truth Social. When a government lawyer was …

Subjects: E-Government, E-Records, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Social Media

Federal Data Is Disappearing

Notus: The Trump administration has disrupted data collection on everything from homeland security, maternal mortality, hunger, drug use, education, disaster preparation and the economy. Joy Binion worked for the federal government collecting data on emerging substance abuse trends in emergency rooms across the country. Her work was part of the Drug Abuse Warning Network, which …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, E-Government, E-Records, Education, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

White House Scraps ‘Burdensome’ Software Security Rules 

Security Week – “Two Biden-era memorandums have been revoked, but some of the resources they provide can still be used by government organizations.  The White House has announced that software security guidance issued during the Biden administration has been rescinded due to “unproven and burdensome” requirements that prioritized administrative compliance over meaningful security investments. The …

Subjects: AI, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Government, E-Mail, E-Records, Government Documents