CNET: "Feds get new tool for online public feedback"

January 19, 2010 2:58 PM PST
by Daniel Terdiman

"The hope, at least among participating departments and agencies, is that having a single tool that can be used across the federal government will make it easy for members of the public to engage with as many agencies as they wish, and to help government bureaucrats meet the requirements of the Open Government Directive, which is built around fostering transparency, participation and collaboration."

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The mass of information available to librarians increases constantly, and the source in many cases is one usually considered to be trustworthy: the federal government (though many may dispute that thought). Accuracy may be subjective but federal data is the "data of record" or the official data that we can work with. The task of librarians has always been to organize and make searchable masses of data. We will need to increase our organizational skills and perhaps import skills from computer science in order to keep up with the quantity of data becoming available. - Luis