Networked Government Resources

This page contains a variety of government information resources that we have discovered. Please advise us of any good resources that we may have missed.

Contents

1. The White House
2. The Congress
3. The Judicial Branch
4. Other Government Information Resources
   • Federal Government
   • State Government
   • Local Government

The White House

• White House Documents and other U.S. Government Hypertexts are available from The Office For Information Technology at The University of North Carolina, which has been at the forefront of electronic distribution of political information since at least the 1992 Presidential Campaign. They maintain several textbases for remote access, which allow users to search for documents bottom-up via words.

  • Search White House Electronic Publications.

  • Search the Health Security Act

  • Search the National Performance Review.

  • Search the FY95 U.S. Budget.

• Daily Summaries of White House Electronic Publications are provided by The Extension Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. These are also available over gopher and email.

• The Texas A & M Gopher, in addition to it extensive gopher structure, has a nice White House W3 Archive. They also maintain textbases from the 1992 Presidential Campaign.

• White House documents are available on various politically-oriented groups over USENET/NETNEWS:
  • Alt.Activism
  • Alt.News-Media
  • Alt.Politics.Clinton
  • Alt.Politics.Org.Misc
  • Alt.Politics.Reform
  • Alt.Politics.Usa.Misc
  • Talk.Politics.Misc

• The Frequently Asked Questions describe other sources for the White House's Electronic Publications and explain how to correspond electronically with the President.

The Congress

• The U.S. Senate has a Gopher server. Senator Kennedy's office is actively using computer networks to maintain contact with consitutents. In fact, Kennedy is the first member of Congress with his own homepage.

• The U.S. House also has a gopher server.

• Track Legislation with the first public-access services from the House Gopher.

• The Library of Congress now has a W3 server which is producing great anticipation for the time when all of the libraries holdings will be available in digital form over the information highway.

• U.S. National Documents include the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

• The Federal Register is available online from a company that repackages it for electronic delivery.

• The Federal Register and Congressional Legislation are available from a prototype gopher from Legis-Late, Inc.

The Judicial Branch

• The Judicial Branch of government is also accessible via gopher.

Other Government Information Resources

Federal Government

Federal Information Exchange, Inc. provides a quite extensive list of Federal information servers.

• Americans Communicating Electronically is a vanguard group of government employees and others from business and academia who are actively working to bring the various components of the federal government into the networked age.

• The Advanced Research Projects Agency has traditionally played a crucial role in sponsoring blue-sky research with potential for major technological breakthroughs. ARPA's National Coordination Office for HPCC plays an important role in funding not just interesting parallel computing research but also advanced network applications. Other Department of Defense servers include the Navy and the Army Research Laboratory. The DoD Information Systems Technology Insertion provides a concise overview of advanced information technologies.

• NASA is a leading agency in making its information resources available on-line.

• The U.S Department of Commerce runs several servers. The Bureau of the Census provides an overview of its mission as well as pointers to variety of publicly available data and The National Institute of Standards offers an online directory. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is distributing transcripts of hearings on intellectual property rights and accepting comments. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationdescribes the agencies missions and its various divisions.

• The U.S. Department of Interior has WWW pages for its main bureaus. The U.S. Geological Survey and The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are two bureaus that have their own WWW servers.

• The Department of Health and Human Services has webs servers for th National Library of Medicine. The National Institutes of Health provides an online resource for information on molecular biology and health issues, including clinical protocols.

• The Department of Education offers public access to education research, statistics, and information about the U.S. Department of Education and its programs. It also maintains more extensive Gopher to provide information to educators.

• The Environmental Protection Agency maintains a future studies gopher.

• The U.S. Department of State has released its 1993 country human rights reports as well as its travel advisories.

• Transcripts of Voice of America broadcasts are also available electronically.

• The C.I.A's World Factbook (1993) has been available for distributed searches since the early days of W.A.I.S. because it was until recently one of the few readily available public domain information resources.

• 1994 electronic filings with the The Security and Exchange Commission are available from a research project EDGAR Development Project at the NYU Stern School of Business in association with the Internet Multicasting Service. Also, available is 1993 Federal Reserve Board Data.

• National Bureau of Economic Research working papers are available from a gopher server at Harvard University.

• Bureau of Labor Statistics of the department of Labor operates a Public Access FTP Server, from which time series data may be obtained.

• The Department of Energy manages and funds the Energy Sciences Network, which links government laboratories, universities, and companies working in the energy field.

• The Social Security Administration has fielded a home page.

• The U.S. Department of Transportation provides information regarding its mission, and is currently emphasizing Procurement and Statistical Information.

State Government

• The California Legislature was one of the first state governments in the country to put its resources online.

• North Carolina was probably the first state with a web page.

• California was not far behind.

Local Government

• The City of Palo Alto, California has one of the first Web servers for local and community information. Information on the history and heritage of Palo Alto is available from the Historical Association. Naturally, the Chamber of Commerce dispenses information on local businesses.

• The The Boulder Community Network has developed a homepage for the City of Boulder. See the listing of community networks.

• The Association of Bay Area Governments is putting web pages wholesale for every local and county government.

• The Governor of Michigan is one of the first governor's with a WWW server.