{"id":27056,"date":"2014-07-28T09:18:26","date_gmt":"2014-07-28T14:18:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=27056"},"modified":"2014-07-28T09:20:12","modified_gmt":"2014-07-28T14:20:12","slug":"us-government-department-to-be-replaced-by-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/07\/28\/us-government-department-to-be-replaced-by-google\/","title":{"rendered":"US government department to be replaced by Google"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <em>National Journal<\/em>&#8216;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationaljournal.com\/tech\/let-me-google-that-for-you-now-a-congressional-bill-20140723?ref=nj_daily\" target=\"_blank\">Alex Brown<\/a> talks about a federal government department facing the end of the line thanks to search engines like Google:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A little-known branch of the Commerce Department faces elimination, thanks to advances in technology and a snarkily named bill from Sens. Tom Coburn and Claire McCaskill.<\/p>\n<p>The National Technical Information Service compiles federal reports, serving as a clearinghouse for the government&#8217;s scientific, technical, and business documents. The NTIS then sells copies of the documents to other agencies and the public upon request. It&#8217;s done so since 1950.<\/p>\n<p>But Coburn and McCaskill say it&#8217;s hard to justify 150 employees and $66 million in taxpayer dollars when almost all of those documents are now available online for free.<\/p>\n<p>Enter the Let Me Google That for You Act.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our goal is to eliminate you as an agency,&#8221; the famously grumpy Coburn told NTIS Director Bruce Borzino at a Wednesday hearing. Pulling no punches, Coburn suggested that any NTIS documents not already available to the public be put &#8220;in a small closet in the Department of Commerce.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>H\/T to Jim Geraghty for the link. He assures us that despite any similarities to situations portrayed in his recent political novel <em>The Weed Agency<\/em>, he didn&#8217;t make this one up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The National Journal&#8216;s Alex Brown talks about a federal government department facing the end of the line thanks to search engines like Google: A little-known branch of the Commerce Department faces elimination, thanks to advances in technology and a snarkily named bill from Sens. Tom Coburn and Claire McCaskill. The National Technical Information Service compiles [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,84,15],"tags":[328,58,553],"class_list":["post-27056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-government","category-technology","tag-google","tag-internet","tag-senate"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-72o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27056"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27059,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27056\/revisions\/27059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}