10 Rules for Radicals
bulldozer safety film called "Stay Calm and Stay in the Cab!" which has over a half-million views.
—Bureaucracy № 4—
One of the big challenges facing government is the deluge of paper, videotape, and other legacy formats. For agencies in the information business, such as the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and many others, the dual challenges of dealing with legacy formats and how to face a digital future have been overwhelming. In many cases, the agencies have turned to what they call public-private partnerships, so-called "no cost to the government" deals that have proven to be especially troublesome.
An example of such a no cost to the government deal was one cut by the Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress, which has the definitive library of federal legislative history—folders for each public law that contain all the hearings, bills, and reports that led up to each statute.
GAO entered into a deal with Thomson West where the government shipped off all those federal legislative histories to the vendor, which scanned them and then sent the paper back.
Not that different than the FedFlix program, but with an important twist. Thomson West didn't send the GAO back digital copies of their data. Instead, Thomson West gave GAO a couple of logins for their staff to use the digitized material, but for everybody else, including government
