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Daily Archives: July 20, 2011

Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act approved by the Uniform Law Commission

Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act Drafted by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform Law – approved and recommended for enactment, July 18, 2011

  • “A new act approved [July 12, 2011] by a national law group establishes an outcomes-based, technology-neutral framework for providing online legal material with the same level of trustworthiness traditionally provided by publication in a law book. The Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act was approved today by the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) at its 120th Annual Meeting in Vail, Colorado.Increasingly, state governments are publishing laws, statutes, agency rules, and court rules and decisions online. In some states, important state-level legal material is no longer published in books, but is only available online. While electronic publication of legal material has facilitated public access to the material, it has also raised concerns. Is the legal material official, authentic, government data that has not been altered? For the long term, how will this electronic legal material be preserved? How will the public access the material 10, 50, or 100 years from now? The Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act provides a consistent approach to solving these problems.”
  • FTC Returns Nearly $108M to 450,000 Homeowners Overcharged by Countrywide for Loan Servicing Fees

    News release: “The Federal Trade Commission is mailing 450,177 refund checks worth almost $108 million to homeowners who were allegedly overcharged by Countrywide Home Loans, Inc. As part of the FTC’s efforts to protect financially distressed homeowners, the FTC reached a settlement with Countrywide last year over allegations that the company collected excessive fees from… Continue Reading

    Office of Thrift Supervision Integration; Dodd-Frank Act Implementation

    “The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is adopting amendments to its regulations governing organization and functions, availability and release of information, post-employment restrictions for senior examiners, and assessment of fees to incorporate the transfer of certain functions of the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) to the OCC pursuant to Title III of… Continue Reading

    NYT: U.S. to Close 800 Computer Data Centers

    NYT: “The federal government plans to shut 40 percent of its computer centers over the next four years to reduce its hefty technology budget and modernize the way it uses computers to manage data and provide services to citizens. Vivek Kundra, chief information officer for the government, said cloud computing could save the country billions… Continue Reading

    BEA Survey of Current Business July 2011

    GDP and the Economy: Third Estimates for the First Quarter of 2011 – Real GDP rose 1.9 percent after rising 3.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010. Imports turned up, consumer spending and nonresidential investment slowed, and federal government spending decreased more. Real Inventories, Sales, and Inventory-Sales Ratios for Manufacturing and Trade for the… Continue Reading

    Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips

    Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips – Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu, Daniel M. Wegner. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1207745, Published Online 14 July 2011. See also Google’s Effects on Memory, PBS NewsHour via YouTube. “The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as… Continue Reading

    The Cost Structure of the Postal Service: Facts, Trends, and Policy Implications

    The Cost Structure of the Postal Service: Facts, Trends, and Policy Implications, “a recently released white paper by the OIG’s Risk Analysis Research Center, examines significant trends and cost drivers for the major cost categories of the U.S. Postal Service, which include labor, non-labor and capital. The paper also presents insights with implications for the… Continue Reading