“Virtual currencies offer countries a cost-effective, fast and accessible alternative to settling financial payments, but unclear laws and regulations are preventing their responsible development and encouraging their exploitation by criminals, says a new Commonwealth report. Virtual currencies, which allow funds to be transferred, traded or stored electronically, have seen exponential growth in recent years, however,… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: February 2016
Lawsuit Prompts Offshore Fracking Moratorium Off California Coast
Center for Biological Diversity, January 29, 2016 – “The federal government must stop approving offshore fracking from oil platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel under a legal settlement filed today in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The agreement resolves a Center for Biological Diversity lawsuit that challenged the U.S. Department of the Interior’s practice… Continue Reading
Urban Institute – Social Security Data Tool
Social Security Data Tool: “Search, visualize, and download data about the Social Security system, with an emphasis on the disability insurance program.” Continue Reading
Transforming Prisons, Restoring Lives
[January 26, 2016] “the Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections issued a set of bold recommendations to reform the federal justice system, enhance public safety, and save the government billions of dollars. In a new report, Transforming Prisons, Restoring Lives, the Congressionally mandated blue-ribbon panel released the findings of its year-long investigation into the… Continue Reading
GAO Reports – Coast Guard Acquisitions, High Speed Internet, Counter-Firearms Trafficking Efforts
Coast Guard Acquisitions: Enhanced Oversight of Testing Could Benefit National Security Cutter Program and Future DHS Acquisitions, GAO-16-314T: Published: Feb 3, 2016. Publicly Released: Feb 3, 2016. Telecommunications: Additional Coordination and Performance Measurement Needed for High-Speed Internet Access Programs on Tribal Lands, GAO-16-222: Published: Jan 29, 2016. Publicly Released: Feb 3, 2016 Building Partner Capacity:… Continue Reading
Linking ‘toxic outliers’ to environmental justice communities
Environ. Res. Lett. 11 (2016) 015004 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/11/1/015004. Linking ‘ toxic outliers ’ to environmental justice communities, Mary B Collins, Ian Munoz and Joseph JaJa “Several key studies have found that a small minority of producers, polluting at levels far exceeding group averages, generate the majority of overall exposure to industrial toxics. Frequently, such patterns go… Continue Reading
GPO Launches govinfo beta to replace FDsys
“The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) launches www.govinfo.gov and ushers in a new, dynamic way for the public to discover and access Government information on the three branches of the Federal Government. govinfo is a user-friendly, modernized site that provides an easy to use navigation system accessible on smartphones, tablets, laptops and personal computers. GPO… Continue Reading
Sunlight launches Hall of Justice – massive data inventory on criminal justice across US
“Today, Sunlight is launching Hall of Justice, a robust, searchable data inventory of nearly 10,000 datasets and research documents from across all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the federal government. Hall of Justice is the culmination of 18 months of work gathering data and refining technology. The process was no easy task: Building… Continue Reading
Commentary – The Open University at 45
Ben Wildavsky [via Brookings] director of higher education studies at the Rockefeller Institute of Government, State University of New York, and policy professor at SUNY-Albany: “Forty-five years ago, when Britain’s Open University (OU) began broadcasting its first lectures over BBC television and radio, there were many reasons to discount its importance. For one thing, the… Continue Reading
Standing on the Shoulders of Cartographers
SSRN – Gregg Gordon: “If you’ve seen my talks about information overload and discovery then you may recognize the image above. It’s borrowed from the Eigenfactor Mapping Science research done by Carl Bergstrom, Jevin West and Martin Rosvall. We’ve done some work with the Eignenfactor at SSRN and understand the benefits of applying eigenvectors to… Continue Reading
Federal Reserve Highlights Progress in Efforts to Improve U.S. Payment System
“In a report that comes one year after the publication of its Strategies for Improving the U.S. Payment System, the Federal Reserve on Tuesday detailed the progress made and outlined anticipated steps for moving forward with its initiative to enhance payment system speed, efficiency, and security. To date, the January 2015 initiative has resulted in… Continue Reading
Founder of Oyez.org seeks new manager and large purchase price
WSJ Law Blog: “For Sale: 61 years of Supreme Court oral arguments, including audio, transcripts and a suite of multimedia tools. It’s not on Craigslist yet, but Jerry Goldman says options are narrowing for Oyez.org, the private online archive of Supreme Court materials he has been building since the early 1990s and providing free to… Continue Reading
