Obama ordering agencies to keep better digital records
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on November 29th, 2011 5:36 am by HL
Obama ordering agencies to keep better digital records
President Obama has ordered federal agencies to make wider use of digital-based record-keeping systems in what his aides promise will be the most significant change to government archiving since Harry S. Truman’s presidency.
The White House on Monday gave agency bosses four months to draft plans to improve how they archive government records, with specific government-wide instructions to follow soon after. The goal is to make federal record-keeping cheaper, faster and easier to access for Americans eager to explore government data, deliberations and decisions.
Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts won’t seek reelection
Love him or hate him — and there are few who fall anywhere in between — Rep. Barney Frank has spent the past three decades crafting one of Congress’s most pugnacious political personalities, which he has deployed frequently as a weapon in the ideological wars of the age.
On the left, the Massachusetts Democrat has been a hero for his effort to rein in the nation’s largest banks and for his role in promoting gay rights, having been the most prominent openly gay member of Congress. On the right, Frank became a stand-in, alongside Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the late senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), for attack lines designed to gin up conservative activists.
Lawmaker challenges TSA on claims of ethnic profiling
At the Honolulu airport, federal officers who allegedly profiled Mexicans are known as “Mexicutioners.” At Newark Liberty International Airport, the profiling officers are called “Mexican hunters.”
In both cases, according to local media reports, co-workers gave the nicknames to colleagues who targeted passengers as an easy way for Transportation Security Administration employees to drive up their productivity numbers.
