legislation

Apr 13, 2014 ∞

Government agency NTIS charges for docs you can get online for free, loses money doing it

Good thing a bipartisan bill aims to end that embarrassing situation.

The things the National Technology Information Service does which don’t involve charging hundreds of dollars for free stuff and bleeding money doing it will be absorbed by the Commerce Department under the proposed bill.

But why does Obama want to add $19M to the failed agency’s budget in 2015? I don’t mean to sound like a melodramatic RNC ad, but it seems like a bad idea.

Apr 11, 2014 ∞

The DATA Act and legislative definitions

Andrea Peterson reports¹ at The Washington Post the Senate has passed a bill, the DATA Act, which would require federal financial data be published in a common format. It sounds like a great idea and something those nerdy data journalists are going to love. The bill is likely to pass in the House as well, and the President is expected to autograph it.

However, a part of the bill Peterson pointed out makes me nervous.

The version passed by the Senate doesn’t set a specific format for the data standard but does require it to be “a widely-accepted, nonproprietary, searchable, platform-independent computer readable format”

Now, to be clear, it’s probably better not to name a specific file format because those may come and go. But I’m hoping the final version of the law defines every word in that quoted bit, excepting “a” and “format” because if it doesn’t, implementation is going to be even slower than usual and enabling high-volume computerized public scrutiny of federal spending is really a the-sooner-the-better sort of topic.

The WaPo headline reads “The DATA Act just passed the Senate” but it doesn’t look right to me. The Senate is the legislative body, which voted to pass the legislation. Not the other way around. Editorial picking of nits? Yes. But that doesn’t mean it’s not an improvement. ↩

Aug 10, 2013 ∞

Legislative failure to define essential terms

The definition of terms essential to the application of a law is the most basic requirement for competent lawmaking.

Sometimes one or more terms are appropriately defined in an open way, to provide flexibility in the application of a law. This is not one of one laws. The shield law is meant to protect reporters, so defining what exactly a reporter is should be done wi surgical precision.

I am open to arguing how broad or narrow the definition of journalist should be in a shield law, but that conversation but result in a specific outcome that is codified in the new law.

It is impossible to have that discussion and achieve that specific codification when legislators shirk their fundamental responsibility.

As Morgan Weiland of the Electronic Frontier Foundation explains in the article linked above, Senators Feinstein and Durbin, and all the legislators who contributed to the poorly-drafted law, have failed in their duty to their constituents and the rest of our country. Hopefully a competent legislator will step in to correct their shortcomings as the law progresses.