What New Information or Data Would You Like Federal Agencies to Publish Online?

Mary Alice Baish, Director of Government Relations and Emily Feldman, Advocacy Communications Assistant (both of the American Association of Law Libraries, AALL), have been doing a tremendous job serving as advocates for high quality and highly accessible legal information on the web in a format that can be authenticated.

The following is an e-mail from Emily which mentions the work of the White House open government working group and includes a request for suggestions regarding specific types of information and datasets you would like to see agencies publish. Although Emily’s e-mail is directed primarily to law librarians I am posting it here because of the value of this initiative to the entire legal community.

FROM: Emily Feldman March 10, 2010
The White House’s open government working group has held several meetings with stakeholders, including AALL, to develop criteria to measure agency open government plans, which must be published by April 7. At a meeting last Friday, I was pleased to learn that the working group adopted Mary Alice’s suggestion that Executive Branch agencies be evaluated based in part on whether they commit in their plans to publish new information (e.g., reports and publications) on their Web sites, in addition to new high-value datasets in XML on Data.gov.

We’re looking for specific types of information and datasets that you’d like to see agencies publish. The working group is also very interested in any cross-agency datasets you’d like to see added to Data.gov (e.g., crime data from DOJ/DHS, health data from EPA/HHS).

Some of the suggestions we’ve received so far include:

· All historic content that agencies have digitized (presuming that agencies followed the Paperwork Reduction Act and didn’t make exclusive deals)

· All the legislative histories that have been digitized by the Department of Justice Library
· Dataset on “charges of discrimination” filed from the EEOC
Are there other information holdings or datasets that you’d like to see added? Please email me the title and name of the publishing agency by COB next Wednesday, March 17.

Thanks,

Emily
Emily Feldman Advocacy Communications Assistant American Association of Law Libraries 25 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Suite 500 Washington, D.C. 20001
202-942-4233
Fax: 202-737-0480 efeldman@aall.org

http://www.aallnet.org/aallwash

103nd Annual Meeting & Conference / Denver, CO. / July 10-13, 2010