Open Source Tools for Government Data

Sunlight Foundation, an non-profit organization to use the Internet to catalyze more government openness and transparency, provides tools and resources for people to improve access to government information.  Major tools include Scout for tracking legislation and public policies, ClearSpending to access agencies' spending data, Open States for state's legislative bills (www.openstates.org), House Expenditure Database, and more.

All can be accessible through http://sunlightfoundation.com/projects

Treasury Reporting Rates of Exchange 1956-2005: www.fdsys.gov

The Treasury Reporting Rates of Exchange, 1956-2005, which list the exchange rate of foreign currencies based on the dollar,are now available on GPO's FDsys, a one-stop portal to authentic, published government information.

This is a result of the partnership between the U.S. GPO and the U.S. Dept. of the Treasury to make historical digitized content available to public permanently. Over the next year, additional historical documents within the Treasury's library collection will be made available on FDsys including the Official Register of the U.S.: 1879-1959.

See more information on this: http://www.gpo.gov/pdfs/news-media/press/12news44.pdf 

Congress.gov-- the new THOMAS successor

The Library of Congress launched the THOMAS Successor, Congress.gov on Sept. 19, 2012.   This beta site will eventually replace THOMAS, the current public domain site for legislative information for the past 17 years.  The new search engine will provide improving public access to legislative information with various display options (PDF, DOC. and ODT, etc).

Read more about this news:

• Congress Launches Thomas Successor
• Introducing Congress.gov
• Congress.gov, the New THOMAS, launched in beta

Cities.Data.gov

The data.gov, the federal government data portal, has a space to make American cities' data available: cities.data.gov   Currently data from Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle, are available.  Please take a look.   

Notable Government Documents 2011: Past as Prologue

 

The annual list of the best federal and state documents was released this week.  Please visit the list through the Library Journal. This year's selection reflects an interesting aspects of the past minors with current reality from diverse themes.

Three Virginia State documents are honored as "notable":
A Community-Based Food System: Building Health, Wealth, Connection, and Capcity as the Foundation of Our Economic Future.

Federal Health Care Reform

Virginia Memory Project.