Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery With Daily Postings Since 2002
The FOIA Project at the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse: “Very detailed court records of the near record 512 suits brought under the Freedom of Information Act in FY 2016 provide a detailed roadmap of how businesses, political groups, reporters and many others used the powerful law to achieve their widely varied goals. Court records obtained, …
Testimony of Scott Amey, General Counsel Project On Government Oversight (POGO) before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform “Examining the Costs of Overclassification on Transparency and Security” December 7, 2016. “…Thank you for inviting me to testify today about the state of the federal government’s classification system. I am Scott Amey, General Counsel …
Enterprise Risk Management: Selected Agencies’ Experiences Illustrate Good Practices in Managing Risk, GAO-17-63: Published: Dec 1, 2016. Publicly Released: Dec 1, 2016. “Federal managers often handle complex and risky missions, such as preparing for and responding to natural disasters, and building and managing safe transportation systems. While it is not possible to eliminate all uncertainties …
“When the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has shared data, including Personally Identifiable Information, taxpayer information, and other sensitive data, with external entities, it has not always adequately protected the data through secure file transfer technology, according to an audit report that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) released today. The IRS shares data …
Via EPIC: “The Department of Homeland Security has released revised Freedom of Information Act regulations. EPIC submitted extensive comments on the proposed changes to the agency’s open government practices. The DHS agreed to make some changes, recommended by EPIC, that should improve the processing of FOIA requests. The agency maintained a broad definition of “educational …
With the Stroke of a Pen: What Executive Branch Actions Can President-elect Trump “Undo” on Day One?, CRS Legal Sidebar, November 22, 2016. Can a New Administration Undo a Previous Administration’s Regulations? November 21, 2016 (IN10), Maeve P. Carey “Following the election of Donald J. Trump on November 8, 2016, questions have been raised as …
OPM IG Federal Information Security Modernization Act Audit – FY 2016: “This audit report again communicates a material weakness related to OPM’s Security Assessment and Authorization (Authorization) program. In April 2015, the then Chief Information Officer issued a memorandum that granted an extension of the previous Authorizations for all systems whose Authorization had already expired, …
“The Libraries has launched a “quicksubmit” web form to help MIT authors comply with research funder public access requirements for articles. We built the form in response to the Department of Energy’s public access plan, released in 2014, which requires researchers to submit accepted manuscripts reporting on DOE-funded work to an open access repository like …
Federal Procurement: Smarter Buying Initiatives Can Achieve Additional Savings, but Improved Oversight and Accountability Needed, GAO-17-164: Published: Oct 26, 2016. Publicly Released: Oct 26, 2016. “The federal government saved nearly $500 million over the past 5 years through “smarter buying”—such as leveraging the government’s collective buying power for things like office supplies. But that’s small …
Review of the Enterprise E-Mail System Acquisition, September 30, 2016. Reference Number: 2016-20-080. “The IRS purchased subscriptions for an enterprise e-mail system [Microsoft] that, as it turned out, it could not use. The purchase was made without first determining project infrastructure needs, integration requirements, business requirements, security and portal bandwidth, and whether the subscriptions were …
ZDNet: “An NSA contractor siphoned off dozens of hard drives’ worth of data from government computers over two decades, prosecutors will allege on Friday. The contractor, Harold T. Martin III, is also accused of stealing thousands of highly classified documents, computers, and other storage devices during his tenure at the agency. It’s not known exactly …
USPS IG – Public Perception of Drone Delivery in the United States Report Number RARC-WP-17-001 “If the U.S. Postal Service intends to consider the option of incorporating drones into its operations, tracking the public’s rapidly evolving perception of this new mode of delivery will be essential to shaping the groundwork of the Postal Service’s strategy. …
