Florida explores open government and the Internet

Posted on 1 December 2007
Filed under Florida, Internet, Open government
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This is old news, but I didn’t hear of it until last week. (Actually, the first I heard was from a column in El Sentinel. It pays to read the Spanish-language press!)

Florida’s governor Charlie Crist has espoused support for open government since he took office. His first executive order was to create an Office of Open Government in the Governor’s Office. In June, he created a Commission on Open Government Reform to “review, evaluate, and issue recommendations regarding Florida’s public records and public meetings laws”.

Of particular interest to me is the committee’s charge to investigate the following issues:

3. The collection, storage, retrieval, dissemination, and accessibility of public records through advanced technologies, including internet access.

The Commission is charged with holding at least three public hearings during its term (through the end of 2008). It’s already held two, with a third scheduled for February in Sarasota.

The documents from the first meeting are currently available online, and there are a few that pertain to the Internet:

A presentation by Jere Moore, suggesting that “all communications within Florida government and especially between government and the public be posted on the Internet daily”
A statement by Americans for Tax Reform and a companion document summarizing fiscal transparency initiatives, many involving making information available online
A variety of presentations and publications by Dave Gowan on electronic access to government records and data, as well as copyright and related topics

In the meeting transcript, Mr. Moore’s testimony begins on page 173, and Richard Watson’s (representing Americans for Tax Reform) begins on 189. (Warning: the PDF is 20 mb.)

I hope they’ll check out the cool work from the Sunlight Foundation.

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Presentation on Net neutrality in Gainesville, Fla. (late)

Posted on 15 November 2007
Filed under Florida, Gainesville, Internet, Net neutrality, Personal, Telecom
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I failed to post an announcement in advance, but better late than never:

I gave a presentation on Net neutrality on 13 November to the Association of Information Technology Professionals, North Central Florida Chapter in Gainesville, Fla. The slides are available here, largely derived from my earlier presentation at the Florida Media Reform Conference.

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Google doesn’t like plus-addressing, sometimes

Posted on 1 November 2007
Filed under Internet
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Google Alerts plus-addressing screenshot
Google, known for offering plus-addressing to users of Gmail, doesn’t actually support sending to plus addresses with its Alerts service.

Finally, the illusion of Google’s perfect single-mindedness as an organization is cracked. At last, one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing!

To be fair, Alerts is still in beta. (Hey, it’s only been around for three years, give them some time.)

Of course, Google Alerts is far from the only subscription service whose Web form struggles with plus-addressing. This is an unhappy fact I’ve noticed since I started using plus-addressing. Webmasters of the world: do not do this. It breaks an RFC, don’cha know.

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