I've mentioned in the past the number of people Googling to the site to find information about felony offender registries and the official Tennesse (a misspelling of Tennessee) state site.
Since then, the new common search is for the Tennesse Felony offender site. I wont even get into how sad it is that people who live in a state don't know how to spell that state's name, but just pass along the official website for FOIL Tennessee's Felony Offender Information Lookup.
The E-Government Act of 2002 calls for the U.S. Federal Government to enhance interoperability by adopting a common search standard. The Categorization of Government Information Workgroup has just finished the second version of their Statement of Requirements for Search Interoperability and are looking for comments and suggestions.
In English, the interoperability standards will provide a structure for information that, if adopted universally, will allow more efficient searching for information across agencies. The standards take into account metadata fields, search technology, and the role of information intermediaries (such as librarians).
Again, they're looking for comments to help refine the standards before delivery to the OMB.
The on again, off again Federal Do Not Cal List is now officially, and permanently, on again. Earlier this week a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the FTC and FCC's registry does not violate the telephone solicitors First Amendment rights.
If you've ever just sat down to dinner and gotten a call asking you to switch long distance services, you might think a Do Not Call List is enough to make you happy.
But, the true value of this ruling is that it opens the door to the possibility of a Do Not E-Mail List. In fact, in the new Anti-Spam laws allow for the FTC to establish such a registry. They will present such a plan to Congress sometime in May, but might also enact something without the approval of Congress (as they initially did with the DNC registry).
Someone came to the site looking for a Felony Offender registry. As far as I can tell the only state that has an online registry of felony offender is Tennessee.
Here are two lists of links to official Megan's Law registries (for sexual offenders):
Parent for Megan's Law
KLAAS Kids Foundation
"The Industry Advisory Council’s (IAC) eGov Shared Interest Group (SIG) and the Federal CIO Council, in partnership with E-Gov, today announced the Federal agency programs selected as the “Top 5” within the Excellence.gov awards program. These prestigious programs were selected from a group of 25 program finalists for demonstrating excellence in e-government innovation. " Read more.
The Top 5 Winners were:
Small Business Administration – BusinessLaw.gov
Securities and Exchange Commission – Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval (EDGAR)
Department of Health and Human Services – National Practitioner and Healthcare Integrity and Protection Data Bank (NPDB and HIPDB)
The Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
Department of Defense, Defense Information Systems Agency – Federal Technical Data Solution (FedTeDS)
Over the weekend the democratic party in Michigan used an eVoting system for its primary. According to their reports, things went off without a hitch. In response to reports (reported here below), about the Pentagon scrapping their eVoting initiative, a DNC spokseman said "I don't know the specifics of their system, but our system was secure." Right.
One third of all votes cast in the primary were collected electronically. Kerry won overall, but later this week they'll be releasing a report breaking down votes by method and candidate. I'll keep you posted.
The 2005 U.S. federal budget includes just $5 million for the eGov fund. The amount requested for the year was $45 million. Last year the fund received just $3 million, which means over the last two years just $8 of the $100 million George Bush had requested for the fund when it was initiated
has been granted. The money is part of a central fund that federal agencies can use toward their eGov intiatives.
As a spokesman for Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) says: "On e-government issues in general, there's just no coordinated political constituency pushing appropriators to allocate money. They see no political benefit in targeting funds toward E-Gov projects, which would require taking away money from other pet projects. In addition, appropriators see the E-Gov fund as duplicative spending."
This is a very short-sighted view, considering that in the long run the fruits of the funded initiatives could end up saving money. Overall, the Government IT budget increased just 1% from last year (to $59.7 billion).
An eVoting pilot that would allow miltary staff stationed overseas to cast their ballots electronically has been postoned. The pilot program was scraped due to security concerns - concerns not just about the pilot, but the security of the Internet in general. The pilot, which was to be tested this week, was testing a system that was planning to be enacted in time for the 2004 Presidential elections. The initiative has seemingly been suspended indefinitely.
The National Governors Association has created an archive of historical information about state governor's going back to colonial times. Or at least it will. Currently the archive contains information on all current governors and historical data on governors from Alabama to Iowa. Additional information is being added alphabetically, so if you are waiting to learn about the military career of Wyoming's third governor, you might have a bit of a wait.
Hi! is an Arabic language aimed at youth in the Islamic world. It is published by the U.S. State Department, and features, from what I can tell of the pictures (it's in Arabic, after all), mainly stories about U.S pop culture.
The first issue came out last summer, but I'm just running across this now and find it very interesting. Check out this State Department press briefing which covers some of the questions that should immediately spring to mind about this venture. (you'll have to do a text search for "hi magazine" since it wasn't the only topic covered during the briefing.