Two years after President Obama pledged a new dawning of governmental sunshine, barely half of 90 federal agencies say they’ve made concrete changes in their handling of Freedom of Information Act requests, according to survey findings released Sunday. While 49 agencies reported changes to their FOIA processes, the remainder either said they had no information or did not respond to the Knight Open Government Survey. In a similar round-up last year, only 13 agencies reported changes, so this year’s numbers reflect a large uptick. Still, “at this rate, the president’s first term in office will be over by the time federal agencies…
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The Energy, Commerce and Defense departments seem to be on the same page, at least when it comes to handling media inquires about a possible government shutdown. As a matter of course, here is what the Defense Department sent over: As a matter of course, the Department of Defense plans for contingencies. In fact, since 1980, all agencies have had to have a plan in case of a government shutdown, and these plans are updated routinely. We will do everything we have to do to continue to support the deployed troops. The Department must also continue many other operations necessary for the…
The staff over here at Federal Times are getting a sense of deja vu from agency responses to our questions about a possible government shutdown. Here is a response from the Energy Department (Emphasis added). As a matter of course, our agency plans for contingencies, but this is besides the point since, as the bipartisan congressional leadership has said on a number of occasions and as the President has made clear, no one anticipates or wants a government shutdown. The Department is working with both sides on Capitol Hill to fund the government and keep its vital services and functions…
Conservative activist James O’Keefe, who became notorious last year after dressing up as a 70’s-style pimp and releasing videos he claimed showed the community organizing group ACORN was aiding and abetting prostitution, has set his sights on the U.S. Census Bureau. O’Keefe posted a hidden camera video today on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government blog purporting to show a Census Bureau supervisor instructing temporary workers to fudge their time sheets. O’Keefe, who worked for two days receiving training to be a temporary Census taker, then apparently told a few superiors that he was being paid for four hours of work he didn’t do, but his…
Omaha police on May 2 cited a Census specialist for a “failed attempt at public limbo,” which may be the five saddest words I’ve ever read. News station KETV reports that 26-year-old Elliott Bottorf was taking a stroll when he saw a parking gate arm. So he did what comes naturally: try to limbo under it. Unfortunately, Bottorf’s balance wasn’t quite up to snuff and he couldn’t make it. As he fell, he grabbed the $397 arm and it snapped off. He was technically cited for criminal mischief, and not for crimes against the future Olympic sport of limbo. We kid…
Betty White killed on Saturday Night Live this weekend, but it’s a shame they buried this very funny sketch at the end of the show. Something tells me a lot of census takers are going to find themselves in Tina Fey’s shoes (that is to say, they’ll have to deal with downright crazy folks) as they try to survey the last stragglers over the next few weeks. [HTML1]
Happy Census Day! April 1 is the day the 2010 Census forms are officially due, but it’s kind of a soft deadline. The Census Bureau will keep accepting forms by mail until mid-April, and will start door-to-door surveys May 1 to collect information from households who haven’t yet responded. Of course, they’d prefer to get as many mail responses as possible. It costs the Census Bureau $57 to visit an average household, versus the 42 cents it costs to mail a survey in. Only 54 percent of the nation’s estimated 134 million households have so far responded to the Census. It’s…
The Census Bureau is pulling out all the stops to get people to return their Census forms this year. So far, the agency has bought Super Bowl ads, had Commerce Secretary Gary Locke talk it up on the Daily Show, and even gotten Dora the Explorer in on the act. But none of their outreach efforts have been quite as tasty as the event Census Director Robert Groves has planned for tomorrow morning. Groves will appear at Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. to answer citizens’ questions about the 2010 Census and encourage people to mail…
Stephen Colbert has some fun with Census paranoia: [HTML1] This year’s Census strikes me as an odd — and as far as federal inquiries go, relatively benign — place to draw a line in the sand against the government. Census paranoia is nothing new, of course, but this decennial survey has the bad luck of falling in a year of lingering unemployment, economic troubles and widespread distrust of the government. At risk of playing amateur psychologist, it seems like a lot of people are displacing their anger onto something that’s really not that big of a deal.
If you’ve watched the Super Bowl or “American Idol,” you’ve seen ads touting the 2010 Census. Fill out your form, the ads say. It’s cool. It will get your state money and representation. What they need to say: You must fill out your Census form. It’s the law. A new Rasmussen Reports poll shows only 13 percent of Americans realize it’s illegal not to fill out your Census form. Census forms will start arriving at homes this week, but the Rasmussen poll, released Monday, shows not everyone understands how the Census works. 57 percent said it is not against the…