After reading the white paper, the last item caught my eye. Here’s what it says:

Administrative requirements during rulemaking

Issue: The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) of 1946 sets rules for how agencies can communicate with the public during rulemaking, accept public comment on proposed regulations, etc.  The Act didn’t anticipate the collaborative tools now available, leading to hesitation and confusion as to how to incorporate them during the rulemaking process.

Proposed solution: The National CTO or OMB should issue guidance to help agencies use collaborative social media tools to enhance the rulemaking process, while still complying with the APA.

This definitely answers some questions from my earlier post.

So basically, the government can’t add social media to the rulemaking process because of a 63-year-old law (that was subsequently amended in 1966). In 1946, computers were the size of entire rooms. In 1966, computers recorded their data on punchcards. Social media to someone in 1946 probably meant sitting around with friends while reading the newspaper or listening to the radio. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg would not be born for another 38 years

Hopefully, the law will undergo a much-needed 21st century overhaul. The national CTO should, upon taking office, heed the recommendations of the council, so citizens can collaborate on the rulemaking process.

Future legislation of this nature should also be written in more flexible language to prevent such confusion from happening.

For now, though, all I can do is both laugh and hope that this changes soon.

It just so happens that it is the kids page for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.

The Web site that has a very 1990s quality to it and there are very few items on it that have anything to do with the work of the NIEHS or the NIH for that matter. What can we find on it?

• Likely over 100 MIDI song downloads that have a very cheezy, GameBoy-esque ring to them.
• Thirty-six dated games.
• Some nice coloring books.
• One of the only things on this Web site that has anything to do with what NIEHS does, the story page.
• A link to this page, “Environment Health Science Education,” which is hosted on the main NIEHS server and is actually a great resource.

While kids pages don’t have to (and shouldn’t) mirror the content of their parent sites, this site brings randomness to a whole new level. I never knew that I could still find MIDI files on the Web until I found this site yesterday.

What kids pages do you like?

The White House Twitter account has been dry since the 29th minute of Barack Obama’s presidency.

Its last tweet, made at 12:29 p.m. on Jan. 20 was auto-posted via Twitterfeed and came from the White House blog:

A National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation http://tinyurl.com/9hg94y 12:29 PM Jan 20th from twitterfeed

It’s clear that someone turned off the White House’s Twitter feed. While one can understand the fear of using a service like Twitter under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, why was it okay for Bush to use Twitter, but not Obama? For a president who is supposed to have a technologically superior administration, Twitter lasted a mere 29 minutes. White House Counsel Greg Craig has been very cautious about the Obama Administration’s use of said technologies, so it would not be surprising if he had something to do with it.

Barack Obama’s personal Twitter account, @BarackObama, has seen a mere two posings since after the election, and none since he became president. This is ironic because President Obama is the most followed Twitter user, with over 242,000 followers.

Hopefully as time progresses, the Obama Administration will make more use of social technologies like Twitter.

(AP Photo / J. Scott Applewhite)