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Wish list for the Obama Administration? Between the gargantuan (National Health Care) and the personally-important (Purple Hearts for PTSD victims), have I ever got a list. But I have four (can we hope for eight?) years to press on those. In the meantime, there's a smaller thing that's apt to get lost in the shuffle, a long-held tenet of Obama's public promise that first took shape with the Coburn-Obama Bill of 2006: "Google for Government."
Now, I'm sure most Americans would actually be surprised at just how open their government truly is: between the ability to look up government contracts promised by the Coburn-Obama bill, to the ability to check on key Senate votes, to the free availability of many Congressional hearings, there's a lot of good that's happened since the U.S. Government began to adopt the ways of the Web in the late '90s.
However: too many hearings take too long (often years) to get released to the Government Printing Office--and some don't get released at all. Too many are classified, and for too long. Furthermore, not every agency is as active--or adequately funded--in putting their materials on the Web, and, beyond that open to search by Google, Yahoo, and other search engines.
The cost of these initiatives is miniscule compared to their benefits.
But there's an even bigger project on my mind: most of these records are only available electronically going back to the late '90s. Have you ever tried to find an older record? It's mind-bogglingly difficult. The University of Minnesota Library is a Federal Depository Library, which means they get all (or most all) records printed by the Government Printing Office. It doesn't mean you can find them (mis-labeled, mis-shelved), or that, once deposited they still exist years later (damaged, lost, stolen).
If you're diligent, and work with enough libraries (or rare book dealers) you can track this stuff down. But as we enter one of the most difficult, sure-to-be contentious periods of our history, I think it's important that more Americans are able to look back at how we've debated these issues before. Mad at Wall Street? Imagine how angry you'd be if you had a chance to read the Pujo Committee hearings or the Pecora Commission hearings. Think KBR and Halliburton are making off like bandits on the War on Terror? The Nye Committee hearings had the entire country in an uproar for years. Want to know why labor leaders are so hot for the card check (and so distrustful of their bosses)? A few hours spent looking through the LaFollette Committee hearings would raise your hair.
Honestly: does Wikipedia exhaust your interest in this stuff? It's our history, our official history--the debates that have shaped our laws and our traditions. They should be available to all. It's true that only lesson you can really learn from history is that we never learn lessons from history, but Obama's promises to bring forth a "Google for Government" really do present a tremendous opportunity. Let's hope he can find the time and the money (not much of either are required, comparatively speaking) to make good on this promise--and in making it good, make it large.