Happy Monday! It’s an important day for lawyers, lobbyists, librarians, good government groups, Gov 2.0 junkies and citizens concerned about the business of the executive branch, because the White House, National Archives and Government Printing Office relaunch the online version of the Federal Register today in XML format at Data.gov.
The “defacto newspaper of the executive branch” (as The Eye describes in the pages of Monday’s Post) is now available in a format that “allows users to transport data from a Web site and store it, manipulate it or customize it elsewhere. Officials suggested that the move puts readers, rather than the government, in charge of deciding how to access the Register’s reams of information.”
Though the Register may be the ultimate record of the business of the executive branch, it is universally recognized as a difficult document to navigate.
But now, “You’re going to start seeing the Federal Register looking way better,” said Carl Malamud, president of Public.Resource.Org, a group devoted to ensuring the online publication of public records. A leading Gov 2.0 advocate and longtime critic of how the government publishes and distributes its important government documents, Malamud spent the last few months working with GPO to test Monday’s release.
“I’ve been very impressed. This really is a sea change, and very much for the better,” he said in an e-mail.
Want proof? Malamud recommended GovPulse.us, a winner of the recent Apps for America competition. The site tracks agency activity in the Register with graphics, mapping and word clouds — a much easier way to digest the Register’s reams of information, until now only viewed online in lengthy pdf documents. GovPulse was built by three developers in their spare time who’ve had to screenscrape FederalRegister.gov to get all the data. The new XML format will make their jobs easier and the site “will really start to sing,” Malamud said.
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