Google, Center for Democracy and Technology Recognize OSTI as Leader

by Moderator in Personal Perspectives | Comments[1] Tags: democracy google public-policy sitemap-protocol

As a staff member involved in OSTI’s Web presence, it was personally satisfying today to hear Google’s J.L. Needham mention OSTI in testimony to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Mr. Needham cited OSTI as an example of a government Web site that increased citizen access to government information by incorporating Google’s sitemap protocol. The video is found in a December 11, 2007 article on Google’s Public Policy Blog, “Senate testimony: Our efforts to better connect citizens to government.”

Also mentioned in Google’s blog is the Center for Democracy and Technology article “Hiding in Plain Sight, Why Important Government Information Cannot be Found through Commercial Search Engines.” OSTI is listed in “Five Websites on the Right Track.” Wow!

For years we have focused on the mission to “make R&D findings available,” striving to improve our search capabilities and create accessible Web pages. Much of my time in early 2005 was spent developing OSTI’s site redesign, with an emphasis on standards and usability. It’s gratifying to hear OSTI mentioned in the public arena; but, even more so to know that we are helping the public find information they need.

Nena Moss

Comments:

Google’s sitemap protocol creates an interesting challenge for OSTI, because it makes the Deep Web a moving target. OSTI hopes to federate the significant science resources in the Deep Web. If one of these databases implements the sitemap protocol it is no longer in the Deep Web. More generally, the site map protocol may lead people to think that the Deep Web is going away, which is far from true. The great bulk of science content is in the Deep Web and will be for the forseeable future.

Posted by David Wojick on January 04, 2008 at 01:06 PM EST #

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