Today (3/16/10), Representative Steve Israel introduced the
Public Online Information Act, which if enacted would free a vast treasure trove of government information. All too often, information that the law requires be publicly available is hidden behind stone walls and paper barriers. POIA tears down these walls by:
■Requiring Executive Branch agencies to publish publicly available information on the Internet in a timely fashion and in user-friendly formats.
■Creating a multi-branch advisory committee to develop government-wide Internet publication guidelines.
This 24-page legislation has many details, which are nicely summarized in
a 1-page description of the bill, a
plain language version of the legislation, and
in this video. In essence, POIA requires the Executive Branch to follow commonsense rules in making public information available online, and encourages all three branches to work together with the public to develop online disclosure best practices.
My colleague Bill Allison blogs about some of the
information that POIA will make available online and why doing so is important, and Clay Johnson, the head of Sunlight Labs, breaks down
why POIA is important to the technology community.
~snip~
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