People
Misguided guidance
I applaud the onrush of electronic government, but I want to make two points about the GPEA guidance published by OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
Digital Government
Paperwork reduction scam
This year is the 20th anniversary of the Paperwork Reduction Act, and the law will be up for reauthorization next year. This seems an opportune time for laying out the case that, in its essential aim of reducing government paperwork, the PRA is badly broken and needs an overhaul.
People
Tax-free Internet means fewer IT workers
If anything demonstrates how profoundly the Internet is revolutionizing American political and economic life, it's the issue of whether the Internet should be a taxfree zone.
Digital Government
No compelling reason - yet - to close NTIS
Just weeks ago, we all thought we were bidding farewell to the National Technical Information Service. NTIS was known to be in trouble financially, and the Commerce Department secretary had said he would send Congress legislation to close down the agency. Now it appears everyone may have been too h
Digital Government
NTIS: A relic that led feds into cyberspace
The Commerce Department has announced its intention to close down the National Technical Information Service. Secretary William Daley said he would submit legislation to Congress for this purpose, and the department announced that it had started talks with the Library of Congress about taking over
Digital Government
Find a balance between info access, security
Federal agency World Wide Web sites burst forth with new information and data sources so fast nowadays that no one can keep up with the flood. If you can't get the government information you seek via the Internet, you have your choice of getting it through print, faxondemand, CDROM, email or th
Digital Government
NARA must learn to cope electronically
The software industry is exploding with new product announcements in electronic records management. Agencies are busily studying vendors' offerings, poised on the brink of commitment to taking their records management functions electronic. Everyone is awaiting the next court decision on whether, an
Digital Government
Privacy policies should not be optional
The chronic insensitivity of federal agencies to the issue of personal privacy is endlessly amazing. Hardly a day goes by without a headline about the public's concern about invasions of privacy. And yet the government blunders on its businessasusual course, poking into the nooks and crannies of
Digital Government
What feds need to know to manage e-records
Federal agencies are scrambling to figure out what they should do about electronic records management.
Digital Government
D.C. group grooms students for IT careers
According to the fiscal 1999 strategic plan for the CIO Council, a key priority for information technology management will be improving the IT skills of the federal work force. The CIO Council joins the chorus of voices telling us that we face a desperate shortage of workers who possess the IT tale
Digital Government
Mandatory e-records management arrives
The National Archives and Records Administration has been circulating a draft bulletin on the scheduling of electronic records. The draft could benefit from many improvements. NARA's chatty document is intended to instruct federal agencies on what to do with their electronic records in the wake of
Digital Government
Fed info locators must put public before data
OMB Watch, a public interest research group, recently issued a report showing that federal agencies' performance on the Government Information Locator Service is abominable and deplorable. Some major agencies still do not even have a GILS, and others have not updated their GILS entries in a year or
Digital Government
GPO bill is 'every nightmare come true'
The Senate wants to give a goingaway gift in the form of the Wendell H. Ford Government Publications Reform Act of 1998 to one of its retiring distinguished members. Introduced by Sen. John Warner (RVa.) as S. 2288, the bill is every nightmare come true for publishing officials in executive b
Digital Government
Want to avoid storage charges? Lose the paper records
Events are conspiring to push federal agencies ever closer to serious implementation of electronic records management. First, federal courts are turning up the heat with more decisions whose collective import is that paperbased recordkeeping is no longer a satisfactory way to manage federal elect
Digital Government
A reformed federal printing law soon? Don't hold your breath
The window of opportunity for reforming federal printing laws shrinks every day and may vanish entirely in a few months. If we don't get a law passed in the current Congress to revise Title 44 and the roles of the Joint Committee on Printing (JCP) and the Government Printing Office, we probably won
Digital Government
Agencies in need of electronic records management solutions
Recordswise my friends the fat is now in the fire. U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman issued a summary judgment on Oct. 22 1997 agreeing that General Records Schedule 20 is arbitrary and capricious irrational and contrary to law. GRS 20 is the rule promulgated by the National Archives and Records A
Digital Government
Effects of new legislation vary from agency to agency
We now have a year's experience with the Information Technology Management Reform Act or as it more commonly known the ClingerCohen Act. It is time to take a brief look at how the agencies are carrying out the new law. One thing you quickly discover is that agencies were positioned very differentl
Digital Government
GILS possible if tied to agency Web sites
A recently issued report (www.unt.edu/slis/research/gilseval/titpag.htm) on the Government Information Locator Service (GILS) portrays a very unevenly implemented locator service excellent in a few agencies and barely a token effort in others. The authors William Moen of the University of North T
Digital Government
EFOIA: Mixed bag of access benefits and legal loopholes
Last fall Congress passed the Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments of 1996 or EFOIA as it is commonly known.
Digital Government
Printing reform: White House backpedals at public's expense
Why oh why does this administration lack the courage of its convictions when it comes to reforming federal printing policy? In the National Performance Review's manifesto "From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government that Works Better and Costs Less " the Clinton administration noted that cong
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