Critics of the Diebold touch-screen voting machines turned their attention Wednesday from the machines themselves to the computers that will tally the final vote, saying the outcome is so easy to manipulate that even a monkey could do it.And they showed video of a monkey hacking the system to prove it.
A federal judge in Washington yesterday ordered the Interior Department to shut down most of its employees' Internet access and some of its public Web sites after concluding that the agency has failed to fix computer security problems that threaten millions of dollars owed to Native Americans.
Internet Cutoff Ordered at Interior: Judge Says Money Owed to Indians Is Still at Risk
The U.S. was founded on, amongst other things, the principle of a decentralized government. Early in the nation's history, this decentralization led to rampant corruption and cronism. Over the years government has become increasingly centralized and, at least in terms of technology, centralization should be the way to go. For example, enterprise architecture is a significantly more appropriate policy than each agency developing their own technology solutions.
Unfortunately, a recent report has found the Government Services Administration (GSA) is in need of a "thorough housecleaning."
The GSA is a centralized agency that handles much of the federal government's technology procurement and implementation. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley said that the GSA has "committed almost every conceivable contracting irregularity," and that the violations "seem to reflect an endemic and epidemic pattern of gross mismanagement, failed oversight, a flawed rewards system, and potential malfeasance."
Pending any additional investigation, I think it is a very safe bet that there will soon be major changes at GSA, effecting federal eGov/IT policy immensly.
California, probably the most forward thinking state in terms of eVoting initiatives, are working out the kinks of their current system. The Seretary of State's office has recently released an Report from their Ad Hoc Touch Screen Task Force.
Nothing especially earth shattering in the report, though the directive that all touch screen voting systems must include an accessible voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) is a step in the right direction, and should qualm many fears about the possibility for funny business with eVoting.
The Center for Democracy and Technology's 10 Most Wanted Government Documents. It is no wonder the number of judicial documents on list considering the stranglehold Lexis and Westlaw have on the legal information database market. One of the biggest issues in the next several years (though I hope it is raised sooner, rather than later), is the use of free government information by private services, that then turn around and provide those services to consumers at exhorbitant rates.
Currently, the policy is that if the vendor attaches enough added value to the information, such use is allowed. Lexis certainly provides value to the government information contained in its database. But, there should be a time, and soon, when more judicial information is available online, through better interfaces, and directly from the government, and it'd be a shame if Lexis' juice prevented that information from being made available for free (which it seems is currently the case).
Last week the US Supreme Court ruled the legislation requiring libraries to use filtering software in order to receive federal funds was constitutional. The arguements were the compelling interest in shielding children from "harmful" material to the protection of free speech (or rather the ability to freely receive speech).
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this whole issue - I agree that the government (via library funding) should not be required to provide access to material the community deems unacceptable, but I know how faulty both the technology and the application of it have been. Obviously, less control over the conduits of access, the better, and the SC ruling is a blow against that. There is a bright spot to the ruling, in that librarians now have more leeway in unfiltering sites for adult usage.
There is a soon to be released survey on legal issues of information on the web and here is an interesting little pre-article about it. The question of how do you make information easily available (in accordane with the Freedom of Information Act), but still protect privacy issues (in accordance with the Data Protection Act). It seems impossible to abide by one set of legislation without runnign afoul of the other. To make matters even more difficult, the real problem, one information expert suggests, "is a lack of trust and confidence in the Government keeping and handling the information properly.”
You can preorder the report here. If it is available free somewhere at a later date, I'll take a look and provide a link then.
This isn't strictly about eGov, but it is related. The Internet Library of Law and Court Decisions is a database of over 300 court decisions shaping the law of the web. Each case includes an extensive summary filled with facts, analysis and pertinent quotes. Topics addressed include "copyright, trademark, dilution and other intellectual property issues, jurisdiction, linking, framing, meta tags, clip-art, defamation, domain name, e-mail, encryption, gambling, click-wrap agreements, shrink-wrap licenses, spamming," and more.
I was a bit wary of this material, since it is collected and written by a law firm, but the site has been approved by Scout, so it is definitely on the level.