Actually, I’m already there, at library.kentlaw.iit.edu/blogs/govdocs. So update your bookmarks and RSS feeds, tell your friends and neighbors, and join me at the new URL!

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) has authored a handy guide to online availability of the 2013 federal budget documents released in January. FY2012 Budget Documents: Internet and GPO Availability provides a brief description of what’s covered in each volume of this vast and sometimes confounding set, and directions to the online availability of each piece of information (FDsys figures prominently). Like all CRS reports, none of this helpful information is intended for you, of course, but thanks to efforts like the collection of CRS reports at Secrecy News, you sometimes get it anyway.

Great news arrived today in the April issue of the AALL Washington E-Bulletin:

Colorado has enacted the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act, setting an important example for other states looking to address permanent public access to official, authentic online legal materials. Governor Hickenlooper signed HB 1209 on April 26 after it reached his desk with full support from the House and Senate. Kudos to incoming AALL Government Relations Committee vice chair Susan Nevelow Mart, who worked closely with Senator Morgan Carroll, the majority caucus chair of the Senate and chair of the Judiciary Committee, to ensure passage. Colorado UELMA covers the Constitution, Session Laws, Revised Statutes and Agency Rules.

UELMA is also moving quickly in other states:

In California, Michele Finerty, Judy Janes, David McFadden, Larry Meyer, and other law librarians and allies continue to advocate for passage of UELMA (SB 1075). The Council of California County Law Librarians included UELMA on their list of lobby day priorities, and NOCALL, SANDALL, SCALL and CCCLL sent letters of support to Judiciary Committee and Rules Committee chairs in March. The bill was placed on the consent calendar for the Judiciary Committee and Rules Committee and passed unanimously on April 18 and April 25, respectively. The Senate Appropriations Committee will soon consider the bill. SB 1075 covers the Constitution, Statutes and Codes.

In Connecticut, AALL president Darcy Kirk, SNELLA president Camilla Tubbs and SNELLA Government Relations chair Jonathan Stock and others continue to advocate for Raised Bill No. 418. The bill passed the Judiciary Committee unanimously last month, and it has been placed on the Senate calendar. Raised Bill No. 418 is the most comprehensive of all current UELMA bills, covering the Constitution, General Statutes, Regulations and Reported decisions of the Supreme Court, the Appellate Court and the Superior Court.

To keep track of UELMA in the states, please see our state bill tracking chart.

Law libraries have a critical stake in the vitality of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and need to be involved in the forecasts and discussions now underway to chart a secure course for the future of the program. That was the central theme of a webinar sponsored by the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and hosted by AALL Director of Government Relations Emily Feltren on Thursday, April 19.

Cherie Givens, Assessment Specialist Librarian at the Government Printing Office (GPO), provided details about the effort to build a foundation for a national plan for the FDLP and explained why it’s important for all depository libraries to participate. GPO is collecting information now to discover, document, and represent the views of all library types in the program; that data will inform decision-making to craft a national plan most beneficial to both users and libraries.

That information is being collected over three stages. First, each FDLP library is encouraged to complete the library forecast questionnaire sent out by GPO in February. The questionnaire asks for feedback on preservation plans, education needs, and economic and demographic factors affecting depository collections and activities at the individual library level, as well as opinions on the relative value of planned and ongoing initiatives conducted by GPO’s Library Services and Content Management (LCSM) team. Cherie noted that GPO has never before conducted a research effort that surveyed the depository community with as many open-ended questions as this one.

Second, FDLP libraries are taking their completed library forecasts to the state level to develop state forecasts that document the needs, vision, and environment at which FDLP libraries operate locally, and to try to build a consensus on the needs and future roles of depositories in the state. GPO is giving each state considerable leeway about how to conduct its own forecast; while quite a few state efforts are being coordinated by their regional depository libraries, states are free to come together through state government documents groups or any other model that suits them. Peggy Jarrett, Reference & Documents Librarian at the University of Washington Gallagher Law Library, presented a short session about how depositories in the State of Washington are organizing their effort around an ad hoc committee of four librarians in the Northwest Government Information Network (NGIN).

Third, each state will work from its state forecast to develop a state focused action plan, documenting the top five goals and initiatives to be undertaken by depository libraries statewide. GPO staff will look at those state plans to see “where we see great things happening” and how GPO can complement those efforts, Cherie said. GPO asks all that all three stages be completed and submitted by June 30, 2012.

All three streams of data – the individual library forecasts, state forecasts, and state focused action plans – will inform a national plan for the FDLP to respond to the most pressing needs of both users and libraries. Along the way, GPO will author a series of white papers that address some of the issues that arise, and conduct additional online forums to seek comments and continue discussions with the FDLP community. Progress reports will be posted in GPO’s monthly newsletter, FDLP Connection.

Quantitative survey results will be analyzed in house by GPO, and Cherie anticipates that by the time the Depository Library Council meets in October, that data will be available to present to the community; she hopes to have at least some of the qualitative data available to discuss by that time as well. The information gathered “will help us to document the need for change” and to demonstrate that the national plan “represents what the community wants,” she said.

“All of this is designed to shape the direction for our future,” Cherie said. “What we need is to pinpoint where change is needed, and to chart a course to make those changes – to make the changes that would be most beneficial to the users and to our FDLP libraries.”

If those changes require amending the Title 44 mandates governing the program, Cherie said that “GPO will work with the Joint Committee on Printing to make changes where they’re appropriate and to see how we can be as flexible to meet your needs as we can be.”

David Walls, Preservation Librarian for GPO, said that “as you might expect from a document that was last amended or updated in 1962,” Title 44 does not provide any guidance on depository library operations in a digital environment. One of the changes to anticipate is “to specify that we’re talking about information dissemination and not publication distribution,” he said.

Sally Holterhoff, Government Information & Reference Librarian and Associate Professor of Law Librarianship at Valparaiso University Law School and chair of the recently formed AALL Task Force on the FDLP, opened the session by reminding attendees of the close connections between law libraries and the FDLP. In the 1978 House report accompanying the bill that would become PL 95-261, which made academic law libraries eligible for depository status, “Congress took note of the natural fit between the service and research missions of law libraries and the goals of the depository program” Sally said. “The federal government is the source of official, authentic versions of the primary law on which our legal system is based, as well as a wealth of other vital government information. Our vital stake in the program makes it important for law libraries to play a part in the forecast of the future of the program.”

Colorado is poised to become the first state in the nation to ensure the trustworthiness of its online legal materials, now that the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA) has passed both chambers of the Colorado General Assembly and been sent to Gov. John Hickenlooper for his signature. House Bill 12-1209 (pdf, 35kb) provides for secure, permanent public access to authenticated online versions of any state legal publications for which the online version has been designated as official.

Law librarians have been fighting this battle for a long time, and it’s exciting to have our first victory within reach! Five other states currently have UELMA bills pending.

Government information librarians were relieved last month when ProQuest stepped in to rescue our favorite reference tool, the Statistical Abstract of the United States, from the brink of extinction. After serving as a staple of basic statistical information for the American public since 1878, the Obama administration looked at its three million dollar budget line and deemed it expendable. Nobody in Congress raised a voice. One wonders how many of them have the 2012 volume on their desks and never even knew how close they came to never seeing a 2013 volume.

While it may be the most egregious case so far, it’s not the first time we’ve seen cuts to the public’s access to government information made in the name of fiscal responsibility, and it won’t be the last. I take issue with two assumptions that seem to feed the rationale for cuts like these: first, that the market can do it better, and second, that all the data is out there already and findable on the web.

Regarding the first assumption: the pricing model for the new, privately published version remains to be seen, but the printed version of the Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract sold for 40 bucks. (Get your collector’s edition now!) The online version was free. I think we all understand that it costs much more than that to produce it, or else its elimination wouldn’t have been at issue. Unless ProQuest chooses to give it away at a loss, some of those who relied on the former, taxpayer-supported version are likely faced with a loss of access.

So the question boils down to whether we think it’s worth three million dollars a year to place this information in the hands of everyone, or only those who will be able to meet the (presumably) higher price tag of a privately published replacement. In other words, does society have a role in paying for a basic set of statistical data to make sure it’s available to everyone, whether it be for your high school kid’s homework, or a solo practitioner, or someone launching the next startup out of his or her garage?

I’ll leave it to others to decide whether a “no” answer to that question reflects more of a small-government zeal or an elitist one, but I think we’re a smaller, more backward-looking society to conclude that public investments like this don’t pay us back many times over.

Regarding the second assumption: the prefaces to the recent print editions of the Statistical Abstract said that both government and private sources contributed to its mix of data. I checked on what that would mean if we had lost the publication, and found out that about 100 of those private sources, which contributed to 179 tables in the book, required copyright permission, meaning that almost 13 percent of the tables in the book were copyrighted. All but a few of those tables were approved for the online and CD-ROM versions. If ProQuest had not stepped in, that large chunk of copyrighted data would no longer have been publicly accessible by any means, short of separately negotiated agreements with those approximately 100 private sources.

However well the transition to the new version of Statistical Abstract works out – and again, three cheers to ProQuest for keeping the series alive, by whatever means – the administration’s decision to kill the Census Bureau’s version remains indefensible, and sets a miserable example. Like anyone else who has looked at the numbers, I am horrified by the state of our public finances and the threats they pose to our future, but I don’t think that the places where government provides business and the taxpaying public with the most fantastic returns on comparatively miniscule investments are the places you look to first for cuts. Here’s another case to demonstrate that unraveling good government doesn’t yield small government, it yields bad government.

The years-long effort to address the reliability of online primary legal materials at the state level finally reached the floors of statehouses across the country when bills to enact the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA) (pdf, 95kb) were introduced in Tennessee, Colorado, and California over a three week period from late January to mid-February.

Tennessee State Senator Brian Kelsey filed SB 2894 for introduction on January 24, and Rep. Mike Stewart followed two days later with the House version, HB 3656. Soon after, House Bill 12-1209 (pdf, 28kb) was introduced in Colorado, and SB-1075 was introduced in California, where legislators will no doubt seek the guidance of the state’s Office of Legislative Counsel, authors of a recent report (pdf, 1.5mb) which lays out some of the options for authenticating online documents and compares their relative costs.

UELMA also won the endorsement of the American Bar Association on February 6 when the ABA House of Delegates approved Resolution 102B supporting the model law. The accompanying report (.doc file) concluded that “UELMA addresses the critical need to manage electronic legal information in a manner that guarantees the trustworthiness of and continuing access to important state legal material.”

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) first drew attention to authentication problems at the state level in its landmark 2007 State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources. That survey turned up a host of troubling practices at the state level which failed to provide users of online legal materials with adequate assurance of their reliability. “It is axiomatic that persons using legal resources seek trustworthy – official and authentic – government information without reservations concerning how online versions relate to authoritative originals, transcription accuracy, completeness, and currency,” the report said (emphasis in original).

AALL is also targeting five other states – Connecticut, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin – in the early months of its push to promote UELMA nationwide.

UELMA is the newest acronym gov docs librarians should learn to love. It stands for Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act, and it was passed by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) at their annual meeting in Vail, Colorado, in July 2011. Keith Ann Stiverson, Library Director at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, served as the official observer for the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) at meetings of the NCCUSL drafting committee. I interviewed her for a brief article about UELMA for Chicago-Kent’s student paper, The Commentator. It appeared in the December issue, and is reprinted below with their kind permission. For more, see the description on the NCCUSL website, and this great summary by Barbara Bintliff.

~

UELMA: Coming to a State Near You? *
by Kevin McClure, Research Librarian

Keith Ann Stiverson, our Library Director at Chicago-Kent, along with colleagues from the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), has been working hard on the development of the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA). UELMA recently won approval from the Uniform Law Commission. I chatted with her to find out why she thinks that’s a good thing.

You’ve been working on something called UELMA. What is it, and why should a law student care?

We should all care, because state governments aren’t doing enough to ensure that the legal materials they’re putting up on the Internet are trustworthy and secure. Like legal research generally, the publication of official, primary source material is moving from print to online. UELMA tells states that if they want to put it online and call it official, then they need to do three things.

First, they need to authenticate it. That means that when you view a document online, you get a seal or some other certification that says it’s the genuine article: then you’ll know it hasn’t been tampered with, it’s accurate, and it’s the authoritative and unaltered version. That’s assurance that you need and that you’re really entitled to if you’re going to court, or citing something in an article or paper.

Second, they need to preserve it. We’ve found again and again that states don’t have preservation standards or policies in place for the legal materials they publish online. Preservation means several things. It means having backups in place so that material is secure from a natural disaster or some other failure, and it means the material needs to be in a usable format, so states will need to have it ready to migrate to new formats from time to time. And one very important piece of the preservation puzzle for legal materials is version control, which means that as materials are amended or superseded, we need to preserve the older versions, because so often, legal research isn’t about finding what the law says now, it’s about finding what the law said at a certain point in the past.

The third requirement is that states need to ensure permanent public access to the material. You can think of this as the open government provision of UELMA. In a democracy, citizens deserve and require access to the documents of our government, and legal material is central to that. UELMA doesn’t prescribe one specific way to do that; it gives states the leeway to set their own requirements, so long as they provide public access that is reasonable and permanent.

But I can look at a statute or a state code online and tell whether it’s on a state government website. Isn’t that authentic enough?

It might be good enough for most purposes, most of the time. But what we in AALL have been emphasizing for years is that when it comes to primary legal resources, any form of publication that leaves their authority open to doubt is a failure. We surveyed all fifty states and found all sorts of troubling practices – states where it was hard to tell whether the online version was official or not, states where it appeared that the online wasn’t “as official” as the print, just about everything you can imagine except what we need, which is the same level of certainty online that we’ve had with print. These are the laws we live by. Being “good enough most of the time” doesn’t cut it.

So we have a uniform law, but it isn’t actually a real law anywhere yet?

Right. We worked with the Uniform Law Commission to draft language that was flexible enough to be workable anywhere. Now we’re taking UELMA to eight key states** where we think we have the best chance to get it passed, to create some momentum.

Is Illinois on that list?

No, it’s not! These issues just aren’t on anyone’s radar yet in Springfield. But with a few key victories elsewhere, we hope to blaze a trail that will begin to develop some common practices nationwide and encourage other states to get onboard.

~

* I tried so hard to think of a better title. Nothing.
** The eight states are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Tennessee, (Oxford comma!) and Wisconsin.

As the Statistical Abstract of the United States fades into history, government information librarians are still coming to grips with the loss of our favorite statistical resource. The Free Government Information blog has been covering the library community’s voice-over narration of this sad saga throughout the year.

Christopher Smith, Pipeline Editor of Oil and Gas Journal, provided a different perspective in a November column: that of a data contributor, who clearly relished his role in adding to the treasure trove of data that went into the Statistical Abstract. His column is reprinted in full here, with the kind permission of the publisher.

~

Information Cancelled
11/28/2011
By Christopher E. Smith
Pipeline Editor

One of the small but satisfying administrative tasks I’ve had as pipeline editor at Oil & Gas Journal is providing the US Department of Commerce with data for its annual Statistical Abstract of the United States. It felt good to be part of an organization trusted enough to provide this information and also to know that at least one small piece of OGJ’s annual Pipeline Economics report would be available to the larger world.

The final satisfaction each year would come when a copy of the finished book arrived in the mail. Aside from information on the characteristics of petroleum pipelines, each new edition contained data regarding national health expenditures, criminal victimizations and victimization rates, employer costs per hour worked for state and local governments, and on and on, with categories added and deleted each year to stay current.

The Commerce Department, however, has already published the Abstract’s 2012 edition. A green, bookmark-shaped note accompanied it. The note read: “Due to the proposed elimination of the Statistical Abstract program from the President’s FY 2012 budget, we worked on an expedited production schedule to bring you the 2012 edition 3 months ahead of schedule. There are currently no plans to continue the program, either in print or on-line. Thank you for your support in the production of the Statistical Abstract through the years. Your assistance has been most valuable to us. The Statistical Abstract Staff.”

Some bad news

As someone who has worked gathering, analyzing, and publishing information for my entire professional life—and enjoys these acts on a leisure basis as well—I took the Abstract’s cancellation as very bad news; the more so when I noted that this was its 131st edition. The industrial revolution hadn’t even occurred the first time the Statistical Abstract was published, and now, it would not be published any more.

To be sure, OGJ will continue publishing the data both its readers and the industry at large find so valuable. Presumably the other organizations that submitted data to the Abstract will continue to do so as well. But what gave the Abstract its unique value was its compiling of a vast array of data in one place.

The 2012 edition features more than 1,400 tables and graphs covering nearly every educational, judicial, meteorological, governmental, business, cultural, agricultural, and medical characteristic of the US. And just in case the reader can’t find what he or she is looking for in its pages, the Abstract also features a guide to other statistical information both in print and on the internet.

On a positive note, Adobe Acrobat versions of all 131 editions can be found at www.census.gov/compendia/statab, as well as spreadsheet files for each table. But from this point forward the document will remain static, purely historical.

Cuts necessary

Cuts to the US government’s budget are necessary. Much has been made from both ends of the political spectrum regarding the need to prioritize these cuts. Conversations attempting to reach agreement on these priorities have repeatedly broken down into rancor and gridlock.

Evidently, however, both the left and the right agreed that the Abstract program was ripe for the cutting. The cut might have been expedient. It might have been easy. That either or both of these were the case is telling.

The government of a free country that would readily reduce its people’s access to information leaves itself susceptible to doubt regarding how much information it really wants the people to have. That most of the population seems more interested in sound bites and muck-raking than actual information might have helped cutting the Abstract go unnoticed. But it also increases the importance of making information readily available to those who would seek it out.

Apparently this job now lies entirely in the private sector.

Abstract:

In a September 27, 2011, letter, the Honorable Chris Van Hollen requested an estimate of the portion of the federal deficit that is due to the current underutilization of capital and labor resources in the economy. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that if those resources were not underutilized—that is, if the economy was operating at its potential level—the projected federal deficit under current law in fiscal year 2012 would be about a third lower, or roughly $630 billion instead of the $973 billion projected in CBO’s most recent baseline. That deficit would be equal to about 4.0 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), compared with the 6.2 percent deficit projected for 2012 in CBO’s baseline. If the economy was operating at its potential, the deficit would be lower because incomes and, therefore, revenues would be higher, while the rate of unemployment and, therefore, outlays for certain government programs would be lower.