Monday, March 02, 2009

What Happens to Recovery.gov Email? Last week I mentioned that the White House had created a website to get feedback on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. One commenter asked if someone would actually read your email or if it would go into a "black hole." If you send an email to Recovery.gov you will be redirected to a web page that says: "Thanks for contacting us. As we work towards economic recovery, we're counting on you to stay involved. Over the next few weeks and months, we'll be adding more and more information to Recovery.gov, so please check back often." I asked someone who works on Recovery.gov what happens to the email people send. My contact said there people are reading the email submitted and it's their goal to respond to email submissions in the future. By the way the White House website allows you to comment on other legislation like the DTV Delay Act of 2009 and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Have you noticed the White House blog? I've been watching and it's updated multiple times a day and White House personnel have even live blogged during the first Middle Class Task Force meeting and the President's trip to Canada (which included photos). There is no comment feature on the blog. I know from personal experience that comment maintenance can be time consuming, but most blogs have this function. The White House may have plans to add a comment section and perhaps they don't have the personnel for maintenance yet. It will be interesting to see what they do. If you send an email to the White House do you expect a response? Would you like to see the White House allow comments on the blog? Tell us what you want. - Jake [Gov Gab: Your U.S. Government Blog] 11:05:23 AM     Federal Reserve releases and withholds documents on credit crisis. As noted here before, the Federal Reserve has been reluctant to release documents about bailout money. Now according to POGO, "Governmentattic.org has posted several documents from the Federal Reserve in response to a FOIA request about the Fed's lending activities related to the credit crisis" but "the Fed was withholding over 2,000 pages of information under the (b)(4) and (b)(5) FOIA exemptions, which protect against the disclosure of "trade secrets" and "inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters."" The Fed Knows Best, Project on Government Oversight, Feb 23, 2009. [Free Government Information (FGI) blogs] 11:01:10 AM

© Copyright 2009 Jocelyn Shaw. Last update: 4/1/2009; 2:33:33 PM. Photo curtesy of Marjorie O'Brien