I'm forwarding this heads-up from the Association of Public Data Users (APDU) list. Over the last two weeks, there have been quite a few calls for comment on proposed data collections published in the Federal Register (see below with due date).

Maybe it's because I haven't had my coffee yet this morning, but I was a little peeved by my failed information search. I found the Census Bureau's FR posting (Federal Register: January 7, 2009 (Volume 74, Number 4) Page 672) (btw, I tried in FDsys.gpo.gov but they've not loaded Volume 74 yet) but at first was stymied because the summary page has no link to the Census Bureau's Web site, and does not have contact information or any link to more information. The full listing has the information, but comments must be written, no Web submissions :-|

Ok fine, I go to www.census.gov and after more than 5 minutes of search/browse, give up on finding exactly *how* to submit comments on the proposed "Quarterly Financial Report" or "Survey of Local Government Finances." What's even worse, census.gov does not have a "contact us" link on it's first page. I finally found it in the footer of a second level page, but could find nothing in the Question and Answer Center about RFCs, proposed data sets etc. *sigh*

I guess this is turning into an FDsys comment. I noticed in FDsys that you can sign up to receive the daily Federal Register Table of Contents which is cool. But there needs to be a way to browse only the requests for comments (or rules changes, notices...) of specific agencies in the FR as well as receive email or RSS of requests for comments. There also needs to be a link in the FR to the agency in question and not just their top level site but to the place on the site with information on the RFC and directions for how to submit comments. And lastly (this is not an FDsys comment but a general agency comment) RFCs should be submitted online.

So go ahead and submit comments for the proposed data collections below, I dare you.

• Census Bureau
  Quarterly Financial Report (February 9, 2009)
  Survey of Local Government Finances (School Systems) (March 13, 2009)
• Office of Management and Budget
  2007 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)-Updates for 2012 (April 7, 2009)
• Bureau of Labor Statistics
  Labor Market Information (LMI) Cooperative Agreement (March 3, 2009)
• Employment and Training Administration, Department of Labor
  O*Net Data Collection Program (January 30, 2009)
• Science Resources Statistics, National Science Foundation
  Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges (March 10, 2009)
• National Institutes of Health
  Information Program on Clinical Trials: Maintaining a Registry and Results Databank (February 5, 2009)
• Administration for Children and Families, Department of Health and Human Services
  Feasibility Test for Design Phase of National Study of Child Care Supply and Demand (February 5, 2009)
• Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Department of Health and Human Services
  The AHRQ Data Inventory (January 30, 2009)
• Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Department of Health and Human Services
  CAHPS Home Health Care Survey (March 10, 2009)
• Surface Transportation Board, Department of Transportation
  Class I Railroad Annual Report (February 9, 2009)
  Quarterly Report of Freight Commodity Statistics (February 9, 2009)

GPO has a new version of its Comparison of Legislative Resources on GPO Access and Selected Government and Non-Government Web Sites (October 2008). It has separate files with tables showing the 34 GPO Access legislative
resources studied and the scope of each of eight Web sites examined. (Scope of GPO Access and Government Web Sites and Scope of GPO Access and Non-Government Web Sites.

The study compares legislative information available on GPO Access to House.gov, Senate.gov, THOMAS, Lexis-Nexis Congressional, Westlaw, CQ.com, and HeinOnline.

The study finds that GPO Access contains a unique mix of online legislative resources not duplicated in total at other sites. ("No Government or Non- Government Web site, other than GPO Access, contains Economic Indicators, Independent Counsel Investigations, State of the Union, United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions (Plum Book), and the United States Government Printing Office Style Manual.")

But, "In terms of scope of the legislative resources it provides, GPO Access is behind the other Web sites evaluated. Many of the other sites either contain historical content on their service or link to external sites with historical information, whereas GPO Access possesses current information that generally begins in the mid-1990s."

The last study (2003) and previous studies are still available at http://fedbbs.access.gpo.gov/library/compare/.

A couple of weeks ago, Bonnie Klein, of the Defense Technical Information Center, submitted a comment here with a link to an article she wrote about the effectiveness of using Google and other commercial search tools to find government information. I recommend it highly:

• Google and the Search for Federal Government Information, by Bonnie Klein, Against The Grain, v.20, no. 2 April 2008.

In it, Klein notes that "Google and other search engines are commercial enterprises, not public utilities." She addresses in particular the fact that government information gets no priority in ranking of search results: "Business operations and revenue-generating advertising partnerships, not altruism, factor into page ranking."

The article examines legal, technical, commercial, and copyright issues, and includes many useful citations.

For example, she quotes, Donna Bogatin from ZDNet, who observes that "By requiring that Web pages have inbound links from third-party Web sites, the PageRank based algorithm may result in automatic exclusion of the most relevant pages for a given query simply because no other Websites have linked to them." (Google Search Page Rank Excludes Relevant Websites, by Donna Bogatin. ZDNet, January 26, 2007).

This is a good reminder of how government web sites that make it difficult to link to documents ("Documents that exist within databases on GPO Access cannot be bookmarked") automatically lower their PageRank.

Thanks, and a tip of the hat to Bonnie for this useful article!

See also: Hiding in Plain Sight: Why Important Government Information Cannot Be Found Through Commercial Search Engines, Center for Democracy and Technology.